


Mind of My Own

by starandrea



Series: Wedding Series [3]
Category: Power Rangers Ninja Storm
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-12
Updated: 2009-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starandrea/pseuds/starandrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunter completely misses the fact that he and Cam are now dating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mind of My Own

  


## Mind of My Own

  


### by Starhawk

  


"It was kind of weird," Cam's voice said. "I mean, he came to my first graduation and I thought _that_ was awkward, but..."

When he trailed off, Hunter grimaced at the ceiling sympathetically. "Not like this, huh?" He sort of wished he'd been there. Cam had invited him, as a matter of course, but he'd been halfway across the state at spring trials and couldn't get away.

"Not even close. Even aside from having Timsheik there with me, which added a whole layer of homophobia that none of us really wanted to deal with."

Hunter wasn't totally convinced that Tim-whoever wasn't around for just that reason. Cam had started dating him less than a month before graduation, and who started dating another student at the end of the school year? The timing was just suspicious. On top of that, Cam didn't really talk about him that much. Tim was just a name tacked onto the odd activity or night out.

There was also the fact that Cam had sworn off of dating altogether after Sage--right up until spring break. Hunter had left on a promo tour, and he'd barely been gone a week when Cam called to say he'd met the cutest TA... Of course, Cam didn't use the word "cute," and he had other partially plausible reasons for calling besides gloating. But the TA interest had lasted two weeks, and then this Tim guy in April.

It was hard to think of Cam as a player, Hunter thought ruefully. But he was a good looking guy, and he obviously had his pick of the field. It was just... weird. He never seemed overtly interested in the dating scene when Hunter was around.

"He asked about you," Cam was saying, and that made him raise an eyebrow at the ceiling. He'd gotten used to Cam's voice in his ear, found it was actually a little easier to tune him out over the phone than in person, but he couldn't pretend not to care when Cam had something to say about him in particular.

"Yeah?" Hunter prompted. "He want to know if I'm off converting more happily straight people to the cause?"

"He said he was sorry you couldn't be there." Cam's tone sounded mildly reproving, which was how he used to sound all the time so Hunter figured if he only got it once in a while now he was doing pretty well. "He asked how you were, and when you'd be back in Blue Bay Harbor."

"Because we like to meet up whenever I'm in town," Hunter agreed. "Behind your back. Plotting ways to get you back to the Wind Academy. Preferably with a woman."

There was a pause, and then Cam remarked, "You're in a weird mood tonight."

Hunter pressed his foot against the other end of the couch, then kicked it once. "I'm just lonely," he admitted, and he was surprised by how sullen his voice sounded.

This produced another moment of silence. "Where's Charlie?" Cam asked at last.

"Off at some thing," Hunter muttered. "Look, forget I said that. I just kind of wanted to be at graduation, okay?"

"It would have been nice," Cam agreed, surprising him again. "But I knew you couldn't come. Besides, it's a good thing, believe me. You'd have been bored out of your mind. I was, and _I_ was getting a degree."

"Yeah, well." Hunter smiled briefly at nothing. "Maybe we can catch up with each other next month. Factory Blue's coming your way at the beginning of June."

"You said you wouldn't be around for your birthday." Cam sounded vaguely accusatory, which seemed strange.

"Change of plans," Hunter told him. "Why? Bad time?"

"I'm supposed to be on a retreat the first weekend in June," Cam grumbled. "I agreed to go specifically because I knew you wouldn't be here."

"I'll be in town all week," Hunter said, secretly pleased by that comment. "I'll see you when you get back, right? How long is the retreat?"

"We get back Sunday night. It's fine, I'm just... I mean, when I decided to go I actually checked the Factory Blue schedule to see if you'd be here on your birthday, and you weren't supposed to be."

"The birthday's not a big deal," Hunter pointed out. "I mean, come on. Blake'll tease me about being old, Tori'll give me something obscenely gay, and Dustin will forget as usual. They can do their routine without you."

"Dustin hasn't forgotten a birthday since Marah got hold of his calendar," Cam replied. "I think you underestimate the power of a space ninja with designer pens and nothing better to do."

Hunter was distracted by that image, Cam was noncommittal as ever, and that was the end of their mutual lament over missing Important Events in each other's lives. For the next two weeks, Hunter didn't hear so much as a "happy birthday" from Cam. By the time Factory Blue arrived in the Blue Bay area, Cam had left on his retreat, and Hunter had reason to regret being home on the day he turned twenty-five.

They ambushed him at the track. They'd clearly gotten his team's help to do it, too. He opened his locker after the last race of the day and was confronted by balloons. While he stared at them in utter noncomprehension, he heard someone that sounded suspiciously like Tori yell, "Happy birthday!" Other voices joined hers, and he turned around reluctantly.

Yup. Definitely a surprise party. Blake, Tori, Dustin, and Marah, along with Charlie and Keisha and apparently anyone else who had been in the vicinity of the trailer when they were passing out noisemakers. He was about to give them a grouchy and not very grateful speech about giving a guy a little warning when he caught sight of Cam.

Standing between Keisha and Perry, Cam looked weirdly comfortable in jeans and a Factory Blue t-shirt. Jeans that actually fit, for the first time since Hunter had known him, and a t-shirt that wasn't covered by another shirt, sweatshirt, or jacket. He looked like... well, he looked good.

In spite of himself, Hunter felt a grin spreading across his face. "You guys," he said, looking at Cam, "do not have enough to do."

"Nah, we've got plenty to do," Blake said cheerfully, pulling a present from behind his back and holding it up so everyone could see. "Starting with presents and food and followed by a free round of laser tag! Happy birthday, bro!"

This evoked another round of cheers, although it was debatable whether they were cheering the birthday or the free laser tag. He decided it didn't matter that much. He also decided, after getting over his first and most embarrassing impulse to just go hug Cam, that ignoring the whole party thing because of one person's appearance might be kind of rude.

So he changed out of his moto gear while Tori bullied his teammates into organizing lawn chairs and vendor tables to give them all a place to eat. She and Blake were having pizza delivered, and it arrived just as he was coming back in street clothes to find out exactly how he would be spending his evening. It turned out he was expected to open presents and eat pizza at the same time, which was hard for him and entertaining for everyone else.

Blake and Dustin and even Charlie, who was not supposed to give him birthday presents, gave him moto stuff. He gave Charlie a look, and got an innocent shrug in return. That told him that this party had not been the spur of the moment thing it appeared, if Charlie had known about it far enough in advance to buy him a present. He wondered who had told Cam, and how he had managed to get here if he wasn't planning to be back until night.

Marah gave him, of all things, a stuffed animal, and he figured he should be glad it wasn't worse. A beanie baby in a moto jersey was really pretty inoffensive compared to the puppies and unicorns she was always going on about. Tori gave him a disturbingly chic fleece sweatshirt, and he couldn't decide whether to be startled or appalled or just really, really impressed. Because he didn't wear sweatshirts, as a general rule, but this was a long-sleeved crimson thing that wasn't going to be even vaguely bulky. He could tell how well it was supposed to fit even before she made him try it on--and it did.

Keisha actually whistled at him as he modeled it, and Blake wore a smirk that said he had known about this way beforehand. Tori crowed. Hunter had a bad feeling that she'd been snooping around his room--with Blake's blessing--at some point in the recent past. Even Charlie gave him an appreciative nod.

Hunter raised an eyebrow in Cam's direction to see if he agreed, but he was talking to one of the mechanics and apparently paying zero attention to The Sweatshirt. A good thing, too, Hunter told himself. He was never gonna hear the end of this as it was.

Luckily, being surrounded mostly by guys meant that the pizza was gone really fast, and once the food was gone everyone started getting restless. So Tori and Marah supervised cleanup, Blake packed away the presents, and before he knew it they were splitting up into cars and trucks on the way to Jokers. It was a very efficient party, Hunter decided with some amount of appreciation.

The appreciation increased when he found Cam waiting by his truck. "Hey, this works out well," he said with a grin. "I'd hate to lose my status as Cam's chauffeur."

"It was you or the combined forces of Marah and Dustin in the back of Tori's van," Cam said dryly. "Let's just say Blake wasn't surprised when I chose you."

"I bet." Hunter smirked at him. "Get in, tell me what you're doing here." Climbing into the driver's seat he added, "What happened with the retreat?"

"Came back early," Cam said, slamming the door behind him. He reached for his seatbelt without elaborating.

"Yeah?" Hunter prompted. "So you knew about this in advance, huh?"

"Tori called me before I left," Cam admitted. "And hey, I got you a present."

The "hey" was new, Hunter thought. And it sounded perfectly casual, like it was just one of those things he said now. Hunter wondered where it had come from.

Then he wondered why everyone was buying him presents all of a sudden, and why Cam had waited until now to give it to him if he really had bought one, because yeah, he was holding a little wrapped box like he expected Hunter to take it. So he clicked his seatbelt into place, stuck the keys in the ignition, and took the box. Weird day, birthday or not.

"I didn't want to raise any questions by giving it to you in front of everyone else," Cam was saying. "You'll see," he added, when Hunter raised an eyebrow at him.

It was a little statue, a piece of wood carved to look like a martial artist... like a ninja, Hunter realized, on closer inspection. That was a ninja strike pose, and there was no mistaking the position of the fingers. He couldn't help smiling as he turned it over in his hands.

"I met a guy on the retreat," Cam offered. "He does a lot of woodworking. Not for money, just for himself and the people he knows personally... he said he enjoyed the challenge."

Hunter looked up in surprise, studying him carefully. "Did you ask him to make this?"

Cam only nodded.

Hunter looked at the piece with new respect. This was a seriously personal gift, then--more even than he'd realized. "This is really amazing," he said at last. "I don't know what to say."

Cam looked pleased. "Happy birthday," he said with a smile.

He held the wood carving up to the windshield to get the best light on it, then smiled back. "Thanks, Cam," he said sincerely.

He wrapped it up again before they left the track, putting it back in its box and stowing it under the seat where it wouldn't get tossed around. Then he started quizzing Cam on this "retreat" while they drove, curious about what he'd been up to in between phone calls. Cam told him, and it was kind of nice to be able to see his expression and watch him gesture out of the corner of his eye.

They were the last ones to arrive at Jokers. The others were gathered in the lobby inside, waiting for them, and Blake hadn't been kidding about the "free" part. The group was all paid up by the time Hunter got there, and they were hustled off to the laser arena to suit up almost immediately.

In the chaos that followed, he totally forgot to ask Cam where he'd gotten that Factory Blue t-shirt. Which was too bad, because he'd seen those shirts before but never really given them much thought. Now he was curious.

He asked the next day, when he met Cam for lunch in the student building on campus. Cam was wearing clothes that fit again, and Hunter actually felt a little weird asking him about the shirt. Because maybe Cam was taking the time care more about how he dressed, but would it seem strange to him that Hunter noticed?

If it did, Cam didn't say anything about it. He just brushed it off, telling him that Sage had bought them both t-shirts last year and he'd never remembered to wear his to the track before. The explanation sounded a little weak to Hunter, but hey, if Cam didn't want to tell him he didn't have to.

He told Cam things instead. Over the course of the week, he told Cam about changes in the team, their upcoming races, why Charlie had been thinking about riding for someone else, that Keisha was considering dropping the sport altogether, and even what little he'd heard about Jules at spring trials. He told Cam he liked being on the road but sometimes he missed Blake, and he told him that he felt like he talked to Cam more than his own brother sometimes.

Cam told him, after being asked directly, that he and Tim-whoever had stopped seeing each other right after graduation. No, it hadn't been because of his dad, he said. Hunter didn't believe him, but he didn't push and Cam didn't volunteer anything else. Except that he hadn't seen his dad since, he was working less this summer than last, and he wasn't totally opposed to the idea of maybe coming out to see Hunter race on the road sometime.

Hunter suggested the Fourth of July.

To his surprise, Cam agreed.

When he left the next weekend, July seemed a long way off. But the time went by as fast as ever, and he and Cam only got in two of their semi-weekly phone calls before Hunter was making plans to come pick him up before the holiday races. It was a long drive, to Blue Bay Harbor and back again, but it helped that he knew the return trip would be one way. He would have some time off to bring Cam home, kick back, and spend some time with his bro.

In the meantime, he found out what it meant to have Cam's exclusive attention at the track. The guy could be a seriously devoted fan when he wanted to be. Or when he didn't have anything better to do. Hunter had never actually known some of the statistics Cam unearthed, or the origin of some of the race day traditions that Cam investigated while he was busy. He couldn't decide whether that was funny, freaky, or just very... Cam.

It was their last night in the Bay area when he finally got the time to watch the fireworks. Cam came with him, bought them both ice cream, and they sat up on a hill overlooking the track while the fog rolled in. The air was just cool enough to feel good on his skin after the heat of the day, and man, the ice cream vendors hadn't skimped with the soft serve. He was comfortably cool and pleasantly full when the first of the fireworks exploded overhead.

Cam hadn't actually finished his ice cream by then, which Hunter didn't realize was a good thing until he _did_ finish. He immediately began to analyze the actions of the ground crew and the resulting pyrotechnic show, commenting both on what must have been the original plan and the way it was being carried out. It seriously detracted from the fun of watching parts of the sky blow up.

"See, they lit those too soon," Cam was saying. "They shouldn't have gone off so close to the ground, and the pause between that round and the next one is--"

"Cam," Hunter interrupted. He didn't take his eyes off of the sky. "That's really annoying."

There was a startled pause. "Excuse me?"

"Stop analyzing it," Hunter ordered. "They're just fireworks. They're not gonna be any better just 'cause you spent all your time figuring out what's wrong with them."

"They could be," Cam pointed out. "Progress is a direct result of humanity's tendency to improve itself."

"Shut up," Hunter told him. "Redesign the fireworks display in your head, okay?"

Cam didn't say another word until the fireworks were over. Hunter figured he was sulking. He also figured that trying to apologize would defeat the whole purpose of getting Cam to be quiet in the first place, so he said nothing.

When the sky was dark and quiet again, he looked over at the shadow sitting on the grass next to him. All over the hill people were getting up, gathering their things, and starting to drift away. Cam was just sitting there.

Which was fair, he supposed, since he was just lying here. He'd put his hands behind his head when he laid down in the grass to give him a better view, but Cam was too fastidious for that sort of thing. The fact that he was sitting on the ground at all was something of an achievement.

"You come up with a whole new display for next year?" Hunter asked at last.

He saw Cam's head turn slightly. "Yes," he said matter-of-factly.

Hunter had to smile a little. "You can mail it to the mayor tomorrow."

"I was thinking e-mail the city planner," Cam remarked. "Faster and more direct."

Hunter just shrugged. "Suit yourself."

They stayed where they were anyway, even though the night's entertainment was clearly over and they had planned to hit the road fairly early the next morning. Hunter was actually kind of tired, and lying here seemed easier than anything else he could be doing. It was a long walk back to the truck.

"So what's going on with you and Charlie?" Cam's shadow asked suddenly. It was a random question, but it didn't require him to move so that was okay. "I've barely seen him this weekend."

"It's a race weekend," Hunter countered, staring up at the sky. "We don't have time to party every night."

"Even at the track," Cam insisted. "You and he aren't... with each other, very much."

"We're not 'with each other' at all," Hunter answered. "He's dating some guy from X-aggerate."

This was met by a brief quiet. "Since when?"

Hunter knew to the day, but he pretended he didn't care. "I dunno, a couple weeks. Why?"

That seemed to stump Cam. "I don't know," he echoed at last. "I guess I just thought you guys had... well. An understanding, I guess."

"That we're the only gay riders on the Factory Blue team? Yeah," Hunter agreed with a snort. "I'd call that an understanding, all right."

"What about Jules?" Cam wanted to know.

"Doesn't ride." Which Cam knew perfectly well. "Besides, he hasn't been around much lately. And if Charlie leaves," Hunter said, a little irritably, "I'm gonna be even more outnumbered."

"So you're not dating," Cam said slowly.

Hunter shrugged. "We date, sometimes. We're just not, y'know... involved."

He could practically hear Cam frowning at that. "What does that mean?"

"Since when are you so interested in my love life?" Hunter countered. He still didn't lift his head from his arms, strangely curious about the answer and willing to stay here as long as it took to get one.

When it came, it wasn't what he'd expected.

"My dad's trying to win me back to the light side of the Force," Cam said at last.

Hunter blinked. Star Wars had been cooler before the prequel movies came out, he thought distantly. It was still geeky, though, so of course Cam would have to flaunt his credentials at the most random times. In ways that made no sense.

He finally gave up trying to figure it out and just asked. "What are you talking about?"

"He just pointed out," Cam said with a sigh, "that my relationships with girls seem to be more successful than my relationship with guys. That's all."

Heterosexuality as the light side of the Force. Funny. "Well, your dad does know a lot about your relationships," Hunter said dryly. "Should have asked him for advice a long time ago."

"I didn't ask him for advice." Cam's tone was sharp. "He never waits to be asked. He thinks it's his job to go around dispensing culturally mainstream wisdom in cryptic sentences, like 'perhaps you're simply more open-minded than your peers.'"

"Perhaps he needs to mind his own business," Hunter retorted. He had told himself long ago that he shouldn't let Sensei get to him, but the comment stung nonetheless. "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure you have a better chance of figuring yourself out than he does."

There was a quiet moment, and then Cam's voice said softly, "What if he's right? I mean... I really don't have such a good track record with guys."

"Cam," Hunter said firmly. "Stop trying to please your father."

There was a soft breath of amusement from beside him, and that was a relief because as soon as the words were out he'd wished he could take them back. It wasn't any of his business, and if Cam wanted to make it his business then that still didn't mean he wanted Hunter telling him what to do. Or that he even thought Hunter knew what he was talking about.

"Easy for you to say," Cam answered. There was just enough humor and gentleness in the comment that Hunter didn't wince. Because it was, wasn't it. Whose expectations did he have to live up to? His own? Blake's, maybe?

Cam's?

That was a strange thought, and he tried to push it out of his mind. He was pretty sure he didn't meet Cam's standards for... well, anything, and yet here they were. Why would Cam hang out with him if he wasn't good enough?

Good enough for what, he wondered silently. Maybe that was the real question.

"Yeah," Hunter said aloud. "Maybe it is."

After a minute, Cam mumbled, "I don't think I'm straight."

Hunter took some comfort in the fact that it was too dark for Cam to see him roll his eyes. He managed to keep his mouth shut just long enough to come up with a convincing argument. "Ever done it with a guy?" he asked bluntly.

Cam hesitated longer than he'd expected. "Yes," he muttered.

"And?" Hunter prodded. "Did you get it up?"

Cam sounded annoyed by the question. "Obviously."

Hunter smirked at the night. "You're not straight, Cam."

"Just because I can have sex with a guy doesn't make me gay, either," Cam snapped.

Hunter raised an eyebrow at that. He was pretty sure it did, actually. On the other hand, for most definitions of "gay," the fact that Cam apparently had sex with girls too would pretty much remove him from the running. "What happened to being bi?" he asked at last.

He thought he heard Cam sigh, but otherwise there was no response.

Hunter took a guess. "How did all this come up with your dad, anyway?"

"We were having dinner," Cam muttered. "You know, our June thing."

Hunter knew. Cam had finally gotten around to suggesting lunch to his dad, and just as Hunter had expected, Sensei had taken him up on it right away. He'd heard via their weekly phone conversations that Cam now had a standing meal date with his dad: once every month, give or take, and they'd gotten together three times since April.

Hunter wanted to think it was a good thing. After all, Cam still had a dad to make up with, and he should take advantage of that. Right? Life was too short to hold grudges against your family--especially when that family wasn't holding a grudge against you in return.

He couldn't be totally happy about it, though, because every time Cam talked about meeting with his father he sounded upset. It didn't matter whether it was before or after, although the one time Hunter had talked to him _right_ after, he'd sounded seriously pissed off. There was just something about the two of them that didn't click anymore.

Then, of course, there was stuff like this that made him understand why.

"He asked about Timsheik," Cam was saying. "I told him we weren't together anymore, and unfortunately this prompted unwelcome observations about my social life and sexuality."

"You broke up with a guy so you must be straight?" Hunter demanded. "Is that his reasoning?"

Cam shifted beside him. "I've never made it last longer than a couple months with a guy," he said quietly. "I've never been with a girl for less than three. He says... I don't know. Maybe I prefer women, and I'm just willing to--to _try_ men."

Hunter frowned up at the stars brightening slowly overhead. There was a breeze coming in off the coast, as usual, bringing cool air, and he couldn't even enjoy it because Cam was being brainwashed by a father who probably had perfectly good intentions. Cam needed to spend more time with gay people. Just to counteract the constant bombardment of the straight.

"Preference," Hunter said at last, "is a really stupid word. You know that, right?"

Cam didn't answer.

Maybe he didn't, Hunter thought. Maybe he really didn't hang out with the queer crowd. At all. Except for the ones he dated every so often.

"Did Sage know you were bi?" Hunter asked abruptly.

There was a pause, and he couldn't tell if Cam was surprised or annoyed or just unwilling to answer. Finally though, he said, "Not at first."

"So you told her?" That was a good sign. Nobody jeopardized a good relationship like that for something they didn't really think was true.

"Kind of," Cam mumbled.

Hunter raised an eyebrow, but he figured he'd already pushed hard enough. "Look, Cam..." He frowned again, wondering when he'd become a queer counselor. "All I'm saying is that I don't _prefer_ men, any more than straight guys prefer women. It's not a conscious choice. It's just the way we're wired."

Cam was quiet for a long time. Eventually he ventured, "It feels like a choice."

Hunter tried not to smile, gave up, and then found he couldn't even keep it out of his voice. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's because you're bi."

Neither of them said anything after that. Hunter stared up at the sky and mentally reviewed the queer clubs in and around Blue Bay Harbor. He figured his chances of actually getting Cam to one were pretty small, but they'd be at least marginally better if he was prepared. The guy really needed to get out more.

Cam finally commented on the time, but otherwise the silence followed them back to the motel. Everything seemed normal in the morning, although they slept later then they'd planned and as a result the debate over breakfast was a little more heated than usual. Hunter didn't like to skip food in the morning, but Cam got fidgety if they took too long about it. Cam also had an annoying disdain for fast food, which compounded the problem.

They compromised by getting lunch from Subway and eating it for breakfast. Good sandwiches. Food calmed them both down, and the road wasn't bad in July with the AC running, so they took turns arguing over the radio and stared out at the scenery in between. Hunter didn't feel much need to talk while he was driving, and luckily, Cam was no more chatty in the passenger seat than he was any other time.

By the time they arrived in Blue Bay it was mid-afternoon. Hunter dropped Cam off at his apartment and headed home without mentioning the clubbing idea. He figured, the less time Cam had to think about it after he'd sprung it on him, the better. Plus he wanted to see what Blake was up to first.

Blake was working. Hunter stopped by Storm Chargers to see him, found both Dustin and Marah there as well, and got totally distracted until dinner. He called Cam to see if he wanted to go out to eat with them, but all he got was Cam's voice mail. So he caught up on town gossip from Marah, and heard anything he ever wanted to know about the track from Blake and Dustin.

It was a good night, he decided, as he and Blake headed home to watch TV and cool down a little. He'd call Cam tomorrow.

"Hey," he said the next day, when Cam picked up the phone in the evening. "I gotta catch up on the local club scene and I need a date. Wanna come?"

He could practically hear Cam's startled look, and he smirked to himself.

"Excuse me?" Cam asked at last.

"Gay bars," Hunter clarified, taking pity on him. "Blake doesn't like to go, says he gets weird looks. Which he does," he added, "since there's not much in the way of family resemblance." Blake didn't appreciate having people think he was "with" Hunter just because he was with him.

"I don't drink," Cam said flatly.

Why didn't that surprise him? "Good," Hunter answered. "We won't have to fight over who's driving. C'mon," he added, knowing better than to let Cam have time to muster an argument. "It'll be fun. There's a band playing over in Killington that you might actually like. Just come out with me for like, an hour, and if you hate it we'll go."

"Why would I go in the first place if I thought I was going to hate it?" Cam wanted to know.

"Why would I invite you if _I_ thought you were going to hate it?" Hunter countered. "You're not exactly fun company when you're not enjoying yourself."

There was a pause, but he couldn't tell if Cam was considering it or just coming up with an appropriately sarcastic reply. Not that he usually needed much time for those. Maybe he really was thinking about it.

"If you go, you can tell your dad you went to a gay bar with me," Hunter pointed out.

This actually earned him a surprised chuckle. "Are you trying to help me?" Cam inquired, and the amusement in his voice made Hunter smile.

"Nah," he said, as casually as he could. "Just trying to make sure your dad doesn't dislike me for no reason."

"Okay," Cam agreed. And for all that he'd tried to convince him, he was still a little surprised when Cam went along with it.

Hunter picked him up at eight-thirty that night. The band was supposed to play till ten, and nobody interesting would show up before nine anyway. Hunter left his truck in front of Cam's building and headed up the stairs, not really expecting Cam to meet him at the door. He was probably in front of his computer, wearing whatever he'd had on all day--which for once, Hunter had to admit, would probably be fine. Cam must have started shopping somewhere other than the hand-me-down section of Oversize Clothes.

He knocked once, heard Cam yell "Come in!" from the other side, and pushed the door open. Cam's apartment hadn't changed much, although there was a lot more room in it without Sage around to dry her batik in every spare space. The AC was on again, too, which kind of surprised him since Cam didn't climate control his place except in extreme weather.

"I'll be right there," Cam said over his shoulder. Not at the computer after all, he was standing at the sink and apparently washing dishes.

With that observation, Hunter stopped noticing the environment and started noticing Cam. There was a difference between not looking like a geek and looking like he had someone to impress, and Cam had definitely segued into the latter--fast. His clothes didn't just fit, they fit well, and the style wasn't bad either.

Hunter had never been the Fashion Police, but he knew what worked for him and he wore it. It was a little disconcerting to see Cam looking... well, like someone who was going clubbing. It was a good thing they were going together, he decided, because the only people who went out alone looking like that were trying to pick someone up.

He wondered, suddenly, if Cam knew that. Hell, Cam might have been out a hundred times and never mentioned it. So he didn't drink--didn't mean he didn't go out anyway. He sure knew how to dress for it.

"So does driving time count as part of the hour," Cam was saying, turning away from the sink, "or do I have to actually be inside the bar for the entire sixty minutes?"

He relaxed a little, grinning. That was the Cam he knew. The one who dried his hands on a plaid dishcloth and then totally forget to push his sleeves down again. Yeah, Cam the player, out at a different club every night. Not likely. It was just another thing on his list of chores for the night: feed the cat, wash the dishes, go to a bar with Hunter.

"Gotta be inside," Hunter told him. "Transit time never counts."

Which ended up being a good qualification, because the band stopped playing early and Cam wanted to leave right then. When Hunter pointed out that they still had twenty minutes left on the clock, he acquiesced with only a token grumble. Then it turned out that Cam knew how to play pool, which Hunter had never bothered to learn, so they spent the remainder of their time huddled together over a pool table while Cam tried to explain why Hunter was seriously incompetent at this game.

The remainder of their time plus more, Hunter realized, when he finally looked at a clock. Cam wasn't even bothering to beat him; they were just taking turns so that Cam could show off and supposedly Hunter could learn something. When they finished sinking all of the balls, though, Cam checked the time automatically, and that was the end of the night.

Or it would have been, if Cam hadn't given him an odd look in the parking lot outside when Hunter tried to hand him the keys. "Did I mention that I can't drive a stick shift?" he inquired, as though it were a minor detail.

Hunter just stared at him. "You're kidding me."

Cam shrugged a little. "I didn't think you'd really let me drive."

"You _can_ drive, right?" Hunter asked suspiciously. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Cam behind the wheel.

Cam gave him a withering look. "I still have a license," he informed him. "Of course I can drive. In principle, I can even drive a stick. I've just never done it before."

"In principle?" Hunter repeated. "What does that mean?"

"It means I know the principle," Cam said impatiently. "Clutch, gas, release. I know how it works, I just don't have any experience doing it."

Hunter was really tempted to tell him that he wasn't going to be getting that experience on Hunter's truck. But he _had_ had a couple of beers, and he had to admit that he was curious... just how good was Cam, anyway? He might not talk the talk, but he enjoyed the band, he played pool, and he looked damn hot in that outfit. He knew the walk, clearly.

He'd also ordered orange juice with ice at the bar, and he'd kept the one glass the entire time they'd been inside--it made it look like he was drinking without actually consuming alcohol. How much of his attitude was just like that? A cover that could be adapted to make him fit into whatever situation he found himself in?

Like now, with the stick shift. "You wanna try?" Hunter asked abruptly. "I'll talk you through it."

Cam's expression was skeptical. "You must've had more to drink that I realized."

Yeah, he kind of felt like that all of a sudden. Hunter frowned, a little confused by his own reaction to Cam. It was just Cam. Same guy he'd known for years. There wasn't anything new or secret about him. Just another messed up guy trying to do the best he could.

"Hey, if you can't do it," he said, trying to shrug off an inexplicable feeling of disappointment. "Lock the truck and we'll take the bus. I have cash."

"I didn't say I couldn't do it." Cam was giving him an unreadable look. "I just didn't think you'd be so ready to let me try."

"If you're gonna do it, get in and do it," Hunter told him, impatient without reason. "The bus doesn't run all night."

Okay, so he was a little surprised when Cam climbed into the truck and put the key in the ignition. Nothing happened when he turned the key, and Hunter glanced down at his feet. "Brake, good," he said, leaning on the driver's side doorframe. "No clutch, bad. Won't start until you push the clutch," he added, when Cam gave him a look.

Cam did as he was told, and the truck roared to life.

"Don't release the clutch unless you're moving or in neutral," Hunter told him, before he could stall it. He let go of the door and walked around the front of the truck, keeping a wary hand on the hood in case it leapt forward without warning.

When he got in on the other side, he found Cam had already put the truck in neutral. "If you brake suddenly, you come to a complete stop with no clutch, the truck'll stall," he said, fastening his seatbelt. "But it's better than hitting someone or turning into oncoming traffic, so don't worry about it. Brake first and worry later."

"Very comforting," Cam said dryly, staring down at the stick. "Does your clutch work off the top or the bottom?"

Hunter stared at him in surprise.

Cam finally got that he didn't know what to say and looked up. "What?" he asked, catching Hunter's gaze. He sounded a little defensive.

"You know the principle, huh?" It was starting to come back to him now. Random moments of bisexual doubt aside, Cam's principle was better than most people's practice.

Cam shrugged once. "I worked on zords. Combustion engines aren't that difficult."

Right. Zords. "The bottom," Hunter said at last. "Push it all the way down to shift, and give it some gas before you let up. Reverse is on this side," he added, with a half-hearted smirk.

"Yes, thank you," Cam muttered, shoving the stick into position. Definitely not used to the machinery, no matter what he knew about the design. On the plus side, he didn't have to goose it at all to get the truck out of the parking space--the slight incline allowed it to roll backwards as soon as he let up on the brake, and Cam just turned the wheel and went with it.

"Keep the clutch down," Hunter reminded him, looking around the parking lot to make sure they were still clear. "Go to first, give it some gas and let the clutch up."

Cam shifted and the truck promptly stalled. Hunter deliberately didn't smile. "Gas first, then release the clutch," he said mildly.

"I know," Cam grumbled. "It just takes some getting used to."

Hunter held up his hands in surrender, but he shifted a little in his seat so he could watch Cam's face. The look of intense concentration was one he usually reserved for things on his computer screen. It was kind of fun to see him apply it to something else for a change.

He started the truck again, and this time it lurched forward when Cam let up on the clutch. He rode the clutch down the aisle and around the corner, crawling to a stop at the entrance to the lot and checking the stick as he hit the brake. Like it could have somehow shifted into another gear while he wasn't looking? Hunter kept his mouth shut.

They sat at the entrance for a few seconds, during which he assumed Cam was going over acceleration in his head. Instead, Cam glanced in his direction and asked, "Which way?"

Oh. He hadn't thought of that. "Right," Hunter said quickly. "Follow this road to the first set of lights and turn right again." Might as well take the back way if they were going to be breaking in a new driver.

Cam gunned the gas before pulling out, and it made their turn into traffic very sharp. Hunter just smiled, because hey, he didn't stall it, did he? He didn't shift, either, but when the engine started to whine and Hunter said, "Clutch, second," Cam did hit the clutch. The engine noise cut out almost immediately, but Cam looked down to see what he was doing with the stick.

"Pull it back," Hunter advised. "And don't look down!"

The truck slammed to a halt at the surprise in his voice, and predictably, it stalled. The only car behind them was far enough back that they slowed when the truck stopped, and Hunter reached over to turn on the hazard lights. "Doing good," he told Cam, strangely reassured by the flash of panic on Cam's face as the other car pulled around them. "There's no one out now anyway, just stay to the right and don't worry."

"I'm pretty sure it's illegal to drive in the breakdown lane," Cam muttered, and Hunter saw him turn the key once before he remembered to push the clutch. The truck rumbled to life again, and this time it rolled forward surprisingly smoothly.

Clutch, shift to second, Cam remembered and didn't look down either. He even tried to go to third before the light, but when the engine noise dropped off to a low growl Hunter didn't have to look down to know. "That's fifth," he said casually, keeping his eyes on the road.

Cam pushed the clutch down and coasted slowly to a stop at the traffic lights. He waited his turn, managed to stall the truck again before getting it around the corner, but he wasn't freaking out about it and the look of determination on his face was better than annoyance. This time he found third, and that was as high as he went until they were out of the downtown area.

Cam drove all the way home. Once they got away from the traffic lights and stop signs, the whole stalling thing became a non-issue, and he had relaxed enough to maneuver around campus by the time they got there. He didn't do as well with parking, probably because the turn radius on the truck was bigger than whatever he was used to and he couldn't back up and inch forward reliably without knowing the clutch better than he did. But he gave up after only the second try, shaking his head and turning the engine off instead of obsessing over it.

"Thank you for not saying anything," he said, handing over the keys without moving from the driver's seat.

"What, about your lousy parking?" Hunter asked innocently. "It's only bad if there are other people around to see it."

He thought Cam actually smiled a little at that, which wasn't exactly what he'd expected but he'd take it. "You should stay here tonight," Cam said, surprising him even more. "Crash on the couch, drive home in the morning."

"That'd be cool," Hunter agreed easily. He wouldn't have asked--or would he? He wasn't sure, but since Cam had offered it didn't really matter. "Thanks."

It turned out that waking up on Cam's couch was a lot better than waking up on his floor, which shouldn't have been a surprise but wasn't something he'd ever had the opportunity to test before. It also turned out that Cam was a pretty good host, when he wasn't totally distracted by other things. He had food, he had extra towels, and he didn't have to work ridiculously early in the morning.

"I think your cat used me as a pillow for most of the night," Hunter informed him before he left.

"Be glad she allowed you to sleep on her couch at all," Cam replied. "She's very territorial lately."

Heather was in the window now, tail hung over the sill and twitching against the back of the couch as she watched something Hunter couldn't see. The pose lasted only until he opened the front door. Then she leapt down, bouncing off the couch cushions and darting between him and the doorframe as she disappeared. "Bye!" Hunter called after her. "Nice sleeping with you too!"

Only when he turned around to catch Cam's eye did he realize what he'd said. Cam had folded his arms and was giving him an arch look. "Sorry," Hunter said, unable to keep from grinning. "Your neighbors are gonna love me."

"I'm more worried about what they'll think of me," Cam said dryly. He didn't really look worried, though, so Hunter just shrugged.

"Thanks for the couch," he said. "You wanna catch up later, maybe see a movie or something?"

For some reason, that made Cam smile. "The student building only plays movies on the weekends," he commented. "We'd have to go to an actual movie theater."

"My wallet can take it," Hunter promised. "What do you say?"

"Sure," Cam said with a shrug. "Something you want to see?"

"Nah, whatever looks good." His truck was taking up two spaces in front of the building, but there was another empty space further down so hopefully no one was too pissed. "Call me with the showtime, okay, and I'll pick you up?"

"Will do."

He nodded at Cam before he closed the door behind him, wondering suddenly if they had reserved spaces here. They must, right? One space for each apartment? Huh. Maybe Cam knew something he didn't about his neighbors. Maybe someone was away. Or maybe he just didn't like them, and had used Hunter's truck to annoy them for the hell of it.

Yeah, 'cause that sounded like Cam, he thought with a grin.

So he went down to the track while Blake was working, had dinner with his bro and saw The Da Vinci Code with Cam. It was a good day, despite the fact that he was pretty sure Cam had tricked him into seeing a movie with Deep Meaning by calling it a thriller. They made plans to hook up after lunch the next day before he headed home.

Blake was already back from his date with Tori, which made Hunter frown as he looked over at the clock in the kitchen. He'd left before Blake, and he was getting home after him? They hadn't spent _that_ much time talking at Cam's apartment afterward.

"Hey bro," Blake called, from the direction of the couch. "How'd it go?"

"Movie was okay," Hunter answered noncommittally. "How's Tori?"

"Totally bored with the summer job thing," Blake said with a grin. "She's actually looking forward to fall."

"That's so wrong," Hunter told him, dropping onto the couch beside him and gazing at the screen without really seeing it. "We gotta get that girl a life."

"I think that's what she's missing," Blake admitted. "She doesn't work so much during the school year."

"What, homework doesn't count?" Hunter demanded.

"Yeah, I know," Blake said, shaking his head. "What about Cam? Seems like he's learned to take some time off, at least."

Hunter shrugged, not really paying attention. "Seems that way."

"I can't believe you got him to drive all the way to San Francisco with you," Blake commented. "Just for a race? Seriously, man, that's unreal."

"Sage got him into motocross last summer," Hunter said absently. "I guess it stuck or something."

"Nuh-uh, that's not it." Blake grabbed the remote and turned the TV down--why, Hunter had no idea. "He brought _her_ to your race, remember? And believe me, he couldn't care less about the track when you're not around. I haven't even seen Cam in, I dunno, at least a month. Probably not since your birthday."

"Well, he's busy," Hunter said, giving his bro an odd look. Since when did he care about seeing Cam, anyway? "He's working, and he's got this volunteer thing going... even his dad's been having a hard time getting a hold of him."

"How do you know all that?" Blake demanded. "And if he's so busy, how did he suddenly have time to go roadtripping with you?"

"It was a holiday weekend," Hunter reminded him. "And I know because we talk. On the phone. Great invention, maybe you heard of it?"

"You don't talk to me on the phone," Blake said.

Hunter rolled his eyes. "I know what _you're_ doing," he pointed out. "C'mon, you don't even like to talk on the phone."

"Yeah, and last I knew, neither did you." Blake looked weirdly expectant.

Hunter shrugged. "Yeah, well, I can't be around every week, right? Just trying to stay on top of what's going on."

"By calling Cam," Blake surmised.

Hunter eyed him. "Well, I'd call Marah if I wanted to know what the latest summer colors were, but our interests don't exactly match."

"Okay," Blake said, holding up his hands in surrender. "Whatever. I just thought, hey, you spend kind of a lot of time with him, that's all."

"I'm on the road half the year," Hunter informed him. "It's a lot of time to catch up on."

Blake just lifted his hands higher before leaning back and focusing on the TV again. Hunter frowned a little, following his gaze. Okay, there was catching up time. But he did spend a lot of it with Cam. Well, Cam and Blake. But that made sense, right? They were the two people in Blue Bay Harbor he knew best.

The Daily Show's theme music started to play, and the date splashed across the screen. Hunter shrugged it off and settled in to watch Jon Stewart. No reason to fix something that wasn't broken. Cam analyzed things enough for both of them anyway.

He'd thought about maybe mentioning it to Cam the next day, but when he stopped by in the afternoon he found Cam picking on his guitar. It was a familiar sound, and he was practicing the Charlie Daniels chords with an equally familiar focused expression. It was a milder version of the look he'd worn in the truck two nights ago. It was a good look for him, Hunter thought, amused. Especially when it was directed at something that wasn't a computer.

"Sounds good," Hunter offered, bracing his arm against the window frame from the outside and speaking only when Cam paused.

He saw Cam stiffen and he grinned. Well, who knew? He could still sneak up on Cameron Watanabe. It'd been a long time since he'd had the chance to try that.

"Come in and help me with this," was all Cam said. He didn't even look over his shoulder, like looking at Hunter would be acknowledging the fact that he hadn't known he was there.

He went into the apartment and found Heather sprawled across the island in the kitchen area. He was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to be there, so he walked over and scooped her up before heading back to the couch. She just hung there in his arms for a few seconds.

"Thanks," Cam said, clearly distracted. "I think I've got the beginning of 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia,' but I can't tell if I'm doing it at a constant speed or not."

"You can't tell?" Hunter repeated skeptically. "Metronome Cam? The sun must be getting to you."

Cam gave him a look just as Heather squirmed, rolling over and sliding gracelessly out of his arms to land in a heap on the floor. She looked at him reproachfully, as though it had been his fault, and he reached down to give her an apology pat. She just stalked out of the way, ignoring him.

"Just do the lyrics, would you?" Cam sounded as impatient as Heather looked. "At least enough so that I can see how well I'm doing."

Hunter shrugged, hitching one hip up on the arm of the couch because he knew it annoyed Cam. "No problem."

He'd never been very good at listening to the music part, so he had no idea where to start. Cam just started playing. But after a moment he nodded in Hunter's direction, and he wasn't one to pass up a cue. "The devil went down to Georgia," he began, watching Cam's face for any indication he was wrong. "He was looking for a soul to steal..."

Cam didn't stop. Even when he got to the chorus, Cam sang it quietly to himself and Hunter listened carefully. When Cam nodded to him afterward, he picked up the words again, and they made it all the way through the song. Without stopping.

"Hey," Hunter said at the end. "That was pretty good." He couldn't help being surprised.

"I need more practice," Cam grumbled, like he hadn't even heard. "I just never really get around to it. Thanks," he added, lifting his head from the guitar. "That helped a lot."

"It's kind of fun," Hunter said with a shrug. "I really never rap anymore. It's cool to, y'know... be around music and stuff."

"We should practice together," Cam said, not as though he meant it.

"Yeah." Hunter was surprised to find that he did. "We should, actually. That'd be cool."

Cam was studying him. "Do you still know 'Rough And Ready'?"

Hunter grinned. "Why? Do you?"

"It's not hard," Cam answered.

"Do it," Hunter agreed. "But I'm not singing the chorus," he added as an afterthought.

Cam was right, the guitar background was easy. Which meant that it was mostly him, which was kind of weird, but it wasn't like anyone could see him but Cam. He even got into it a little, and he made Cam laugh, so that was cool.

They messed around with "Talking Song Repair Blues" after that, which he was really good at because the Factory Blue mechanics had started quoting it whenever someone on the team broke something. "Your torque converter's running low on torque," they'd say if he asked what was wrong. Or, "your main prodsponder's nearly gone."

He made Cam do something hard then, 'cause it was only fair. Plus, maybe, he liked seeing him concentrate like that when Hunter could watch. Something about that expression seemed very... well, important, somehow. He didn't know how. It didn't really matter. It was just fun to watch.

So they hung around the apartment for the rest of the afternoon, and when Cam offered to buy dinner Hunter really wanted to take him up on it. But he'd agreed to meet Blake after work, and he might have just canceled if his bro hadn't been all strange the night before. Instead he invited Cam to come with them.

It was fun, another good day in a string of them, and he for once he wasn't quite ready to hit the road again when the weekend beckoned. He rolled out of Blue Bay Harbor at eight o'clock Friday morning, but he couldn't help thinking that Cam was probably just getting up as he left. He'd wanted to see Superman Returns--not that he hadn't already, but not with Cam. Cam would mock the movie mercilessly, and that was half the entertainment.

He wouldn't have minded getting one of those smoothies from the student building, either, since he hadn't found any place that made them quite as thick. And Cam had mentioned some song he was supposed to hear, but had forgotten to get him the CD on Thursday and he wasn't even sure what the title was. He'd have to call him and bug him about that later.

Or now, he thought, glancing at his cell phone speculatively.

Nah, that would just be cruel. Waking a guy up on a day when he didn't have to be out of his apartment before ten. Definitely cruel.

Hunter called him anyway, figuring that if he had to be up, he might as well make other people suffer too. Cam didn't answer the phone, which wasn't surprising, but Hunter knew that the only thing more annoying than people who called at inconvenient times was people who called at inconvenient times and didn't leave a message. So he did.

"Hey, it's me," he told Cam's voice mail. "You forgot to give me that CD, you know. Now I'm gonna be in suspense for weeks. I'll make you play it over the phone if you don't at least tell me what it's called--"

"Have you already left?" Cam's voice interrupted.

Hunter grinned. Score. "Yeah," he said, switching his phone to the other hand so he didn't have to chose between steering and shifting. "I'm on my way out of town now. I'll have to catch you next time we're in the area."

There was a brief pause. "So you called me because...?"

"Because I can," Hunter replied.

"Ah." Cam didn't sound particularly annoyed. "Interesting rationale. Presumably, though, there are plenty of other things you can also do, which makes me wonder why calling me at eight-thirty in the morning somehow moved to the top of your list."

"You're just lucky, I guess." He could feel his mood lifting, and he decided that getting Cam to pick up the phone this early in the morning was some small compensation for missing the weekend. "So tell me what the song is."

Cam stayed on the phone with him for almost twenty minutes. Hunter kept expecting him to hang up, to just stop answering questions or at least tell him to focus on the road. Cam didn't approve of mixing cell phones and driving. But he kept talking, even promised not to see the movie until Hunter could see it with him, and when Hunter finally let him go he decided that Cam deserved the _good_ coffee for that phone call.

He could mail him some, he reflected. That would be kind of funny. Or he could get Blake to drop it off. But Blake would just want to know why he was giving Cam coffee in the first place, and he didn't really feel like explaining. He'd better go with Plan A.

Cam was amused. Hunter found a voice mail on his phone the next week, telling him that mysterious coffee fairies had visited his mailbox earlier in the day. Coffee fairies with good taste, even. Which apparently surprised him, since Cam thought the coffee fairies in question added too much sugar to really know what they were drinking.

Hunter called him back that night to assure him that coffee fairies were, by and large, a discerning group. No matter how much sugar they used.

He broke away from the team at the end of the month to pass through Blue Bay Harbor again. It was out of his way, and it was just an overnight stop, but at least they could catch the movie before it was out of the theaters entirely. He forgot to tell Blake he was coming, which ended up being lucky because it meant he could go out with Cam without feeling guilty about ditching his bro.

At least, it was lucky until he pulled up in front of his apartment building just before midnight and saw Tori's van parked there. Hunter hesitated, but he really didn't want to barge in on them without warning. He ended up heading back to Cam's place and crashing there for the night.

So Blake didn't even know he'd been in town, and somehow Hunter never got around to mentioning it. He made up for it by bringing free amusement park passes back with him in August--promotional stuff for the team--and passing them around. Tori had to work the day they went, but Dustin and Marah and even Shane came with them. Kapri was nowhere to be found, and Hunter wasn't sure he wanted to know but he asked anyway.

"Off the planet," was the general reply. Then Shane launched into some complicated explanation of what the hell she was _doing_, which Hunter paid almost zero attention to. He was much more interested in the way Cam was paying attention. To Shane.

He didn't say anything directly _to_ Shane, but he wasn't ignoring him either. Shane returned the favor, and everyone got along until they got out of the van--at which point they split up for pretty much the rest of the day. Cam went with Hunter and Blake, while Shane wandered off with Dustin and Marah. It worked out.

He ended up being out of town for Cam's birthday in September, which he felt kind of bad about after the whole surprise party thing, but he mailed him some stuff the week before. A t-shirt he'd picked up at one of the races: "Ten Reasons Bikes Are Better Than Boys," which he figured would make Cam roll his eyes. More coffee, because it was easy and Cam always needed more. And passes to the end-of-season show at Reefside MX.

Cam came, but he didn't bring anyone. Funny, Hunter thought. Cam hadn't gone that long without an SO since he'd moved out of the Wind Academy. Well, maybe last winter, after Sage. Three months, then. Now he was going on four. Hunter wondered about it.

Finally, he was home for the off-season. Charlie had left Factory Blue. The guy who replaced him was obnoxious, and luckily--not for the team, but for Hunter personally--not quite as good. His bottom-ranked status meant that Charlie's promo slot fell to Keisha, who had stayed after all, and "Thank god," Hunter told her, because he really didn't like the idea of pair-touring with Obnoxious Guy.

It was good to get some time off. He'd thought maybe things would settle down a little. He was way too optimistic, even if the holidays had never been a time of great stress for him. They were for everyone else, and this year he got sucked into it. More than usual, more than Cam's random dramas, because this time it was Blake.

"Bro," he said, one day at the beginning of November. "I need some advice."

Bad sign, Hunter thought, looking up from his checkbook. When Blake needed advice, it wasn't which shirt to wear with which pants. Not that he would have taken Hunter's word for that anyway, Hunter thought with a rueful grin. Street fashion and gay fashion: not compatible. He had been informed of this in no uncertain terms.

"Sure," Hunter said, dropping his pen on the counter and bracing his foot against the leg of the stool he was sitting on. "What's up?"

Blake jammed his hands into his pockets nervously. Which was to say, really, he hooked his thumbs in the pockets and gave a casual shrug, looking like the essence of cool. "I'm gonna ask Tor to marry me," he said.

Hunter just stared at him for a moment, then kicked his brain into gear. "Wow. Uh, congratulations," he amended hastily. "That's--I mean, that's really great, bro."

That was really shocking, was what that was. But why? Why hadn't he seen that coming? They'd been dating for three years, and he could count on one hand the number of times they'd stopped talking to each other. Of course they would... it made sense that they'd eventually--

"Yeah, thanks," Blake was saying with a grateful grin. "I wanted you to be the first one to know. Well, except for her. Actually, you do know before her--for sure anyway."

"You've already talked about it?" Hunter guessed. Geez, they were getting _married._ His bro was gonna propose, and the girl was gonna say yes. He couldn't even get his mind around it.

"Yeah, it's come up," Blake said, and if it wouldn't be totally uncool Hunter would have said he was squirming. He really did look embarrassed. "But look, that's part of what I wanted to ask you. Y'know, some people like to make a big deal of it..."

Hunter hated that. His immediate reaction was to say no. Don't spring it on her, don't surprise her, don't make her say yes in front of a hundred people.

"And I was just wondering," Blake continued. "I mean, we're gonna do Thanksgiving with her parents again, and I thought... I dunno, maybe I should ask her then. Or maybe it's too much, maybe I should ask her first and we could just tell them at Thanksgiving--"

"She'll love it," Hunter interrupted. He would hate it, but Tori would love it. "She loves being set up, you know that. She's probably already expecting it."

Blake brightened. "You think?"

"You said you talked about it," Hunter reminded him. "She's just waiting for you to propose, now."

"Well, that's the other thing." His bro looked thoughtful this time, less awkward, and Hunter relaxed a little. Easy question, maybe.

"Should I say anything to her mom first?" Blake wanted to know. "You know, like... ask her permission or something?" He hesitated, then continued, "I mean, it's not like I can ask her dad, and maybe it'd be polite or... I don't know. Maybe it'd be weird."

Okay, definitely not an easy question. He'd been lulled. "Not weird," Hunter said carefully, trying to think it over objectively. Which he couldn't do, considering he knew both of them awfully well. They'd been together a long time. It's not like they'd be surprising Tori's family or anything...

Something Cam had said came back to him then, and he really had no idea why. _If I ever have a son, _he'd said. _I want you to do me a favor..._

Strange that it was Cam he thought of now. Strange that a promise he'd made so casually had stuck with him, and really strange that his brain apparently associated Cam's hypothetical kids with his brother's impending marriage. But it made him as objective as he was ever gonna be, because all of a sudden he was looking at the situation from the parent's point of view.

"Yeah," Hunter said finally. "Talk to her mom first. She and Tori are close, right? I think she'll be happy you asked."

"Okay, good," Blake agreed. And that seemed to settle it for him. "Call Mom first. I will. I'm even gonna do it tonight," he added. "So I don't have to keep thinking about it."

This didn't appear to require a response, so Hunter watched him wander back toward the couch thoughtfully. He looked down at his checkbook again, then shook his head. Married. Geez.

He was gonna have a sister-in-law. And a mother-in-law. Seriously, why hadn't he seen this coming? It was so obvious, and he'd never even thought about it. He just didn't think of his little bro as... well, as a husband.

He picked up his pen, then set it back down. This was serious.

"Don't call Cam," Blake said over his shoulder.

Hunter aborted the grab he'd made for his cell phone. "Wasn't going to," he protested, going for wounded innocence. "Anyway, what is it, a secret?"

"Yeah, it kind of is," Blake said dryly. "It won't be quite the same if she hears it from someone else."

Out of total respect for his bro, Hunter waited for Blake to leave before he called Cam's apartment. "Hi," he said, as soon as Cam picked up. "Blake's gonna propose."

"Really." There was a brief pause after Cam's immediate reply. "To Tori, I assume."

Hunter rolled his eyes. "Yeah, of course to Tori. On Thanksgiving."

Cam hesitated again. "Well, she'll probably like that. In front of her family and everything."

"You're not surprised by this?" Hunter demanded. "Am I the only one having a hard time imagining my little bro being married?"

"How many other people have you told?" Cam asked dryly.

"Just you. Oh, and it's supposed to be a big secret, so, y'know. Don't tell anyone."

"First off," Cam answered, "I'm betting Blake told you the same thing you just told me. 'It's a big secret, so don't tell anyone.' It obviously didn't work when he said it, so what makes you think it'll work just because you do?

"Second," he continued, "if you haven't told anyone else then you're only judging your reaction compared to mine. And since I've been expecting Tori to show up with a ring for the last year and a half, while you apparently never even considered the idea, it's not surprising we'd look at it a little differently."

"A year and a half?" Hunter repeated, ignoring the whole "secret" thing. Blake had known he would tell Cam, after all. He'd just meant, don't tell anyone _else_. "Why a year and a half?"

"The end of their freshman year of college," Cam said. "You either break up or stay together after that. They stayed together."

Hunter frowned. Really? "Is this based on observation or personal experience?"

"I didn't date anyone my freshman year," Cam replied.

"Well, you've made up for it recently," Hunter muttered. Something occurred to him, and his frown deepened. "Hey, what about you? Would you ever get married?" It was a rhetorical question for him, at least in the short term, but he was curious about Cam.

"That depends," Cam said, after a long moment.

"Yeah?" Hunter waited, but he didn't elaborate. "On what?"

"On who asked me." Cam sounded vaguely amused.

"You expect the girl to ask _you_?" Hunter asked skeptically. Only Cam. Things must work differently in the geek world.

Then Cam surprised him by saying, "I don't really expect it to be a girl."

Hunter had to think about that, especially in light of Cam's complaints over the Fourth of July about his relationships with guys. "You think you're more likely to hook up permanently with a guy than with a girl?"

"I should clarify that I don't think either one is likely," Cam told him. "I'm not the easiest person to live with. But yes, I think a woman is less likely to put up with me for the rest of my life than a man is."

Really. Wow. He hadn't expected that.

"You?" Cam asked idly. "Are you the marrying type?"

Until just a minute ago, he wouldn't have said that Cam was. Now he had to rethink his own answer, and he found he couldn't do it under pressure. If Cam could imagine getting married, why couldn't he? Could he?

"Doesn't really matter, right?" Hunter said at last. "It's illegal in almost every state."

"So you think it doesn't count as marriage if the government doesn't approve it?" Cam wanted to know.

Hunter blinked. "Well, no," he began. "But I mean... that's what marriage is, right?"

There was a long pause. "Not quite how I would have defined it," Cam said at last. "But I guess I'm a romantic."

"You?" Hunter smirked. "You hide it well."

Cam didn't answer.

Finally, Hunter rolled his eyes and gave in. "Okay, fine," he conceded. "What is marriage? To you?"

"It doesn't matter," Cam said, and Hunter could practically hear the shrug in his voice. "I was just curious. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

"Don't give me that passive-aggressive crap," Hunter told him. "If I said something stupid, just tell me, okay?"

The hesitation was briefer this time, and Cam's tone was sharp when he replied, "Fine, you said something stupid. Love and marriage are serious to me, and I don't appreciate being patronized. Happy?"

Hunter tried not to bristle. He'd asked, after all. And he'd have a better chance if he thought about the answer instead of just snapping back. Cam wasn't really hurt until he tried to pretend he wasn't, which meant that he wasn't kidding--this was serious.

"Getting married is serious to me too," he said at last. "But the government's a big part of it, right? Marriage means you can speak for your partner--y'know, legally, medically, all that stuff. If I'm not gonna be able to do that, then... what's the point?"

"Maybe your partner is more important than the government," Cam said unexpectedly. "Maybe the point is to promise them that you'll always be there for them, no matter what the government says you can or can't do."

Hunter didn't know what to say to that.

"See," Cam remarked a moment later. "I told you I was a romantic."

That made Hunter smile a little. "Yeah," he admitted. "I guess maybe you are."

"Seriously," Cam said, when neither of them said anything else. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

"Oh." Hunter frowned, trying to remember when they were leaving. "Doing a show in Stone Canyon. Me and Keisha are doing some holiday promo thing for X-Gear."

"Can I come?" Cam wanted to know. "My dad wants me to come to the Wind Academy, and I'm trying to have other plans."

One word flashed through Hunter's mind before he could push it aside. _Forgiven._

"Yeah, sure," he said easily. "Free bed, even, if you want it. Factory Blue pays for separate rooms when you tour with an opposite-sex teammate."

"How long are you there?" Cam wanted to know.

"Two nights, I think." He looked around for his calendar before he remembered he'd left it in his truck. "I'm pretty sure we're leaving Wednesday afternoon. That gonna be a problem?"

"Depends what time in the afternoon," Cam admitted reluctantly. "I have a class from two to three."

"I'll check," Hunter promised. "We can probably leave later if we need to anyway."

It turned out that they weren't even technically required to attend the promo party the night before, but they'd probably be able to make it if they left right at three. So, the day before Thanksgiving, he wished his bro good luck, threw his backpack into the back of the truck, and headed for campus. He knew where Cam's class was, and when parking was easier than he'd expected he figured he'd head in that general direction.

He made it to the building by two forty-five, and just for the hell of it, and he started looking for the room. The number corresponded to a small computer lab. He spotted Cam right away, since he was one of the only ones up and moving around. He had his back to the door when Hunter looked in, but it didn't take a genius to realize that when Cam said he "had a class" he had meant he was _teaching_ a class.

Hunter smiled to himself. Most of the students were so focused on their screens that he could probably stand there and watch for the next ten minutes without anyone noticing. And it was kind of interesting to watch Cam move from one person to the next, looking over shoulders and occasionally pointing at things. It wasn't a part of his life that Hunter was really familiar with.

Here, he got closer to people than Hunter expected. He leaned in, and he touched people's arms absently. He put his hand over a student's once, when she didn't relinquish her mouse fast enough. He shook his head without the set of frustration that had made his shoulders tense in Ninja Ops, years ago. And he transferred that intense focus from one student to another without seeming to be distracted in the slightest.

One of the students had noticed Hunter. Someone else looked up when his keyboard stopped clicking, and she studied him for a long moment before turning to look at Cam. Hunter raised an eyebrow, wondering what that look had been for. Okay, so he was well-dressed... but not well enough dressed to be out of place here.

"Cam," the second student said, when Cam stepped away from the computer he had been inspecting. "Visitor?" She made it a question, and Cam turned around quickly enough.

Their gazes met, and Cam's went immediately the clock. "I'll be done at three," he said, like Hunter might have forgotten.

Hunter shrugged. "Mind if I wait?"

There wasn't a person in the room still working now. They were all looking at him, or at Cam, some of them actually looking back and forth between them. Hunter felt his lips twitch, and he tried to repress another smile. He hadn't actually meant to embarrass Cam, but it looked like he'd managed it anyway. Might as well enjoy it.

"Fine," Cam agreed. Not like he was just saying it, either, but like he really agreed, which was surprising. He didn't really seem upset at the attention he was getting for Hunter's unplanned arrival. On the other hand, he could do a pretty impressive poker face when he wanted to.

So Hunter stepped into the room and took a seat, watching idly as people pretended to go back to what they were doing. Cam kept checking screens for another five minutes, and Hunter couldn't tell if he gave up at that point or if he'd really intended to wrap up class early. Either way, he went up to the front of the room and told people to start shutting down.

He was different when he addressed the entire class, Hunter decided. Different in the same way he had been individually... He was personable, approachable, even friendly. He didn't keep them at a distance, the way he always had with the Rangers. Hunter wondered if this was a change that had come on gradually, or if it had happened all at once and he just hadn't been paying attention.

A couple of students lingered with questions after the class was officially over, which seemed weird on the day before Thanksgiving. Or it seemed weird until Hunter thought, well, their teacher _was_ Cam, and then he shook his head at himself. They had no idea, really, who Cam was. So it was still weird.

He'd thought maybe Cam would want a ride back to his apartment afterward. Turned out that Cam had taking the three o'clock thing seriously, though, and had left a duffel bag in his office down the hall. Or his cubicle. The student offices were a shared space in a larger room, with individual desks and cubicle walls.

Cam's was unpredictably personalized, and Hunter was surprised to see a picture from the amusement park trip in August on the bulletin board. "Cute," he said, pointing at it. He remembered Cam buying it now that he saw it. The two of them in the front of a roller coaster car as it barreled down the tracks, either screaming or laughing--it was hard to tell.

"Metaphor for life," Cam answered, a small smile on his face. "I'm ready," he added, closing one of his desk drawers and swinging the duffel over his shoulder. "Heather's all set, and I figure I may even get some work done on this trip."

Hunter thought that was pretty optimistic, but he didn't say so aloud. This was Cam, after all. No question he had a laptop stashed somewhere in that bag.

He had told Keisha he was bringing someone, and she didn't seem surprised to find out who it was. Cam unexpectedly agreed to join them at the party that night, and if he and Keisha didn't get along quite as well without Jules to draw the attention, they didn't overtly clash either. Cam fit in bizarrely well with the rest of the room, too, in the way that Hunter could tell he wasn't impressed but no one else seemed to notice.

It left him feeling sort of disturbed, so he tried not to think about it.

Trying only got him so far. Lying in bed that night, staring at the dimness lit only by streetlights through the thick curtains and the status light on his phone, he was still wondering. "Cam?" he said softly. Maybe he wasn't even awake.

"Yeah?" Cam's voice drifted across the room to him, just as quiet.

"Why are you so polite?"

He heard soft sigh of amusement. "Am I?"

"Yeah." Hunter tried to come up with a way to explain it. "Like, you didn't really care about that party, right?"

There was a quiet moment. "It didn't seem to have any real purpose, no," Cam said at last.

"Right, but you went. And you were nice to everyone. You know, nicer than you are to your friends, even. But not because you liked them." He smirked into the darkness. "You probably came up with enough sarcasm on that crowd to write a book."

"I'm nice to my friends," Cam said defensively.

"You're honest with your friends," Hunter corrected. It wasn't until he said it that he realized, that was the difference. "You tell it like it is. You treated those guys like they weren't worth the effort."

There was another pause. "And you thought I was polite?"

"You were polite," Hunter informed him. "You didn't care enough about them not to be."

Cam's reply was quiet and cryptic. "I guess that's your answer, then."

Hunter thought about that for a long time before he fell asleep.

Thanksgiving in Stone Canyon was pretty low-key. By the time they left on Friday, Hunter was more than glad he'd had Cam to entertain him. Keisha was cool enough, but she wasn't Charlie, and she definitely wasn't Cam. They traded comments, argued over food, and on the way home they stopped by AGU so Hunter could find school-appropriate merchandise to give his bro and future sister-in-law as presents.

When Cam started to eye the campus bookstore like he might actually buy something too, it occurred to Hunter that he hadn't officially invited Cam to spend the holiday with him and Blake. Not yet, anyway. Was it too early? The last two years Hunter hadn't even remembered to ask him what he was doing until the week before. When Cam had said, "Nothing," Hunter had told him to come by the apartment and catch a movie with him and Blake and Leanne.

Leanne was out of the country this year, had been since August, and she wasn't due back until springtime. Blake was counting on spending at least part of the holiday with Tori's family, but he had promised not to let them talk him into the whole day. The afternoon movie was their ritual, he'd promised Hunter. He'd be there.

So now that he'd thought of it, should he ask Cam? Christmas was still a month away. Maybe Cam hadn't even decided what he was doing yet.

There was one way to find out.

"Hey, Cam," Hunter said, leaning around the end of the aisle to see what he was doing. Reading. Of course. "Whatcha doing for Christmas?"

Cam glanced up, then looked back at his book with a shrug. "If my dad gets his way, I'll be at the Wind Academy on Christmas Eve. Since I refuse to spend two consecutive days in his presence, that means I don't have plans for Christmas."

"Want to hang out with us again?" Hunter asked. "Blake promised not to spend the whole day with Tori's family, so we're gonna do the movie thing in the afternoon."

"Blake hasn't been exposed to the full force of a family that's adopting their future son-in-law yet, either," Cam answered, closing the book. "Things could be different after he proposes."

"Hey." Hunter frowned at him. "He's not prone to brainwashing, okay? I think he can take care of himself."

Cam opened his mouth, then hesitated. "That was a stupid thing to say," he said at last. "Wasn't it."

Hunter's annoyance eased. "Yeah," he agreed. "Kind of. So are you coming, or what?"

Cam nodded, like there had never been any question. "Sure. I'll be there."

"What's the thing with your dad?" Hunter asked, before he could go back to the books. "Ninja thing, or family thing?"

"Family thing." Cam didn't look particularly thrilled about it. "It's just dinner. Too bad I'm not dating anyone who could come with me and keep him on his best behavior."

"You want some company?" Hunter offered. "He probably likes me less than you right now. I can be your lightning rod."

It made Cam smile even as he shook his head. "He's not your problem. I'll be fine."

"Hey, we share problems," Hunter told him. "I take some of yours, you take some of mine. I'm coming with you."

It turned out that Cam was right about most of it. He _would_ have been fine, spending Christmas Eve alone with his dad. He also would have been in a terrible mood the next day, which interfered with Hunter's self-interest, so lucky them that he came along to shoulder some of the awkwardness. He was also right that the Thanksgiving proposal had changed Blake's Christmas plans somewhat: he did leave the Hansons' house after lunch, but he brought Tori with him.

So Cam and Hunter and Blake and Tori went out to see a movie Christmas afternoon. They got Chinese takeout for dinner and gave each other presents in front of the TV at Hunter and Blake's apartment. And afterwards, when Cam made them turn on the news instead of one more in an endless string of holiday specials, Hunter microwaved some popcorn and passed it around, and they argued good-naturedly over current events until it was too late to pretend they weren't tired.

New Years was a little less family-friendly and a little more crazy. As always. Kapri didn't come, which at first seemed like a good thing. Later, though, Hunter wondered if she would have been the common ground between Shane and Cam, who stopped talking to each other again early in the evening. Hunter didn't even see what happened, but Tori whispered that Shane had been talking about his ninja classes and Cam had made a snide comment and, well.

Tori managed to contribute to the festivities just by being there with a sparkly thing that drew Marah's eye. The ring on her finger had to be explained several times, and each time the explanation got a little more... detailed. Okay, graphic. Mostly thanks to Blake and Shane trying to outdo each other in the How Close To Lewdness Can We Get Without Actually Saying The Words department.

Hunter might have laughed if Cam hadn't looked so disgusted by the whole game. Dustin seemed mortified, and hey, he was a hard guy to embarrass. So finally Hunter decided that, no matter how tolerant Tori seemed, and even if it was his bro, he was gonna have to get involved. For Cam's peace of mind, if nothing else.

"Don't listen to them," he said loudly, interrupting Shane just before he would have said something else. "Marriage is family. Tori's ring just means she and Blake are joining each other's families, that's all."

Shane looked like a dirty remark was right there, just waiting to be said, but Marah was looking at Hunter when Tori elbowed Shane hard in the side. "Kapri and I didn't get rings when we joined Uncle's family," Marah said innocently.

Hunter gave her a suspicious look. Sometimes it was hard to tell when she was being naive because she was naive and when she was being naive for the fun of it. No way was she as fluffy as she and Kapri liked to pretend.

"Yeah, well, Hunter didn't get a ring either," Blake said, with a totally straight face. "Only husbands and wives give each other rings. Or, y'know, husbands and husbands," he added, glancing at Hunter. "Hunter's my bro, so Tor'll be his sister."

"Oh, _I_ see," Marah agreed. "So no rings."

"No rings," Blake confirmed.

"Anyone want glasses?" Hunter offered, latching on to the nearest distraction. He figured if the conversation degenerated again in his absence, at least it wouldn't be his fault.

Marah did, which meant that Dustin did too, and when Hunter left Cam fell into step beside him. "Thank you," Cam muttered under his breath.

Hunter didn't bother asking for what. "No problem."

The group kind of split up after that, which was probably a good thing. Blake and Tori wandered off to look at the murals. Cam made some noise about wanting to get away from the crowd for a while, and Hunter followed him. That left Shane with Dustin and Marah and some really goofy looking 20-07 glasses, but he figured Shane had been friends with Dustin for years. He could take it.

They'd meant to regroup outside of Storm Chargers just before midnight. But Cam got sidetracked by, of all things, a bubble-blowing demonstration. A couple of people with pans of something soapy and large elaborately shaped wand-like structures had drawn a small crowd on the corner, and Cam stopped to watch without a word.

It was actually kind of cool, Hunter decided a few minutes later. Sort of hypnotic, even when they didn't manage to make a bubble that detached completely from the wands. The colors were lazy and shiny on the surface of the soap, and maybe it wasn't his usual speed but it was meditative and calm in the midst of a party crowd that Cam didn't really seem to be enjoying.

Funny, Hunter thought. He hadn't seemed to mind so much in years past. Or was it just that Hunter hadn't been paying such close attention then?

They were still standing there, watching, when he heard Kelly's group starting their countdown a street away. He and Cam exchanged glances, and he shrugged. Cam smiled, and they went back to staring at the soap bubbles.

The crowd around them eventually picked up the chant, too. By the time they got to ten, even Cam was calling out the numbers. They shouted their way down to one along with the strangers gathered around them, and instead of pulling his noisemaker out of his pocket, Hunter found himself grinning at Cam.

Cam was smiling back. He looked happier now. Hunter didn't really think about it, he just leaned forward and kissed him. One hand on Cam's shoulder to warn him and a gentle kiss that was meant to be a token gesture, an acknowledgement of the past year, and maybe a wry nod to the fact that they were the only queers in their old circle of friends.

Cam tilted his head to accept the kiss, eyes closing briefly, just like the romantic he claimed to be. It was... easy. Cam had anticipated him, same as he always did. And suddenly Hunter wanted to kiss him again.

It was a strange and somewhat lonely thought that drifted through his brain as he drew away. It had been a while since he'd had kissing rights to anyone, let alone someone he cared enough about to spend time with. And Cam was... well, just like that--Cam was someone he could see himself kissing.

"Happy New Year," he said, the words sounding odd to his ears.

Cam didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. "Happy New Year," he echoed, and his voice was quiet in the middle of cheering and congratulations. It was just a matter of time before someone starting singing.

"We'd better go find the others, huh?" Hunter glanced back at the bubble makers, but they had set down their wands in favor of celebrating the midnight hour. "Who knows what kind of trouble Marah's gotten into without us."

"I think I'd rather not know," Cam muttered, shoving his hands into the top of his jeans' pockets. Not as easy as it used to be, Hunter noticed with secret amusement. There wasn't enough room in those pockets for more than his fingers.

"You and me both," Hunter remarked.

They headed for Storm Chargers anyway. The crowd was already starting to drift a little, its mission of ringing in the new year accomplished. They found the others gathered out on the street. No one asked where they'd been, which Hunter thought was a little weird, but hey, he'd take it. The bubble-blowing thing probably wouldn't go over well in tonight's mood.

Dustin invited everyone back to his place, but when Hunter looked at Cam he could tell he didn't want to go. Probably because of the Shane thing. "I gotta be up early today," he told them, begging off with what was not his most creative lie ever, but who cared?

"You want a ride?" he added casually, catching Cam's eye.

Cam took him up on it. They said their good nights and headed out, walking half a mile or so to the truck in almost complete silence. Cam must have been tired, because he didn't say much on the ride back to campus either. Hunter let the truck idle outside his apartment building until Cam was inside and the light came on.

He turned the radio on as he pulled out again, just to give his mind something to do on the way home.

He called Cam up the next day to see if he wanted to go out. "It's Geek Night at Catch Club," he teased. "Wear your glasses and the first beer's free."

"Tempting," Cam's voice said dryly. "But I don't like beer and the books are better here."

"The music's better there," Hunter countered. "Plus I need someone to help me improve my pool game. C'mon, just for an hour?"

"Anyone could improve your pool game," Cam replied. "And it's not just an hour, it's an hour plus travel time, which is significant."

"Name your price," Hunter told him.

There was a pause from the other end of the line. "Meditate for peace," Cam said at last. "Next Sunday at the Friends center."

"Is that an all day thing?" Hunter asked suspiciously.

"You can participate in hour-long intervals. I give you an hour at the bar, you give me an hour at the center."

He considered that, but it seemed fair. Besides, it was meditating. It wasn't like he'd be required to spend money or even really interact with other people. "Okay," Hunter finally agreed. "Deal."

He was required to spend money, as it turned out. Cam had conveniently forgotten to mention that there was a "donation" at the door for anyone who hadn't collected pledges. Hunter didn't complain, though, because he'd gotten Cam to dance with him at the club and that was worth pretty much any donation.

The next time Cam got him into something marginally weirder than he'd expected was a few weeks later, and this time he didn't go into it with an excess of accumulated goodwill. Still, the Forest Park coffeehouse didn't sound too threatening. He was okay with reciting "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" in front of random grad students and their friends if it would get Cam points with the apartment community committee.

He wasn't ready for the way Cam treated the song, though. They could have been back in the apartment with Sage two years ago if he went by the playful looks Cam was giving him. Hunter raised his eyebrows in return, puzzled but more than a little amused. The only thing that stopped him from playing along was the fear of outing Cam to people he had to live with.

He cornered Cam about it immediately afterward, following him out of the common room without bothering to wonder where he was going. "Hey," he called, getting Cam's attention. "What was that?"

Cam gave him a seriously innocent look, which Hunter didn't buy for a second. "Excuse me?"

No, definitely not buying it. Because the way Cam had said, "It might be a sin," had been ridiculously sexy and he knew it. Before he could think better of it, Hunter accused, "You were coming on to me."

Cam just blinked at him. "By... singing?" The way he said it made it clear that that was the most bizarre thing he'd ever heard.

Hunter felt a grin tug at his lips, and he couldn't suppress it. "Yeah," he said firmly. "By singing."

Cam's lips twitched in return. "Well," he said, as though it was perfectly reasonable. "You are the devil. I'll take whatever advantage I can get."

Okay, Cam was officially flirting. Hunter liked it. "We're gonna talk about this song later," he told Cam. "I'm obviously gonna need some practice if we do this again."

"Why?" Cam inquired blandly. "I always win."

"Yeah," Hunter said with a smirk. He moved in closer, keeping Cam's back to the wall so he didn't have anywhere to go when his personal space was invaded. "About that."

Cam gave him a tolerantly amused look. He didn't look anything like nervous. "Yes?"

"Well, you get the fiddle," Hunter remarked, putting a hand against the wall behind Cam's head. "I think the devil should get something in return."

Two people chose that moment to wander out of the common room, chatting loudly and moving slowly enough that they had plenty of time to take in all of their surroundings. Neither Hunter nor Cam said anything until they'd passed, and then Hunter jerked his head in the direction they'd gone. "You out to your neighbors?"

Cam actually shrugged. "Mostly no," he admitted. "It's fine if they know; I just never bothered."

Hunter let his hand fall. "We're gonna talk about this later," he repeated, eyeing Cam to make sure he understood. "You wanna do dinner tomorrow?"

"Sure," Cam agreed quickly. "Maybe we can practice afterwards."

Which was why, when Blake called the next day to say that he'd forgotten something vitally important at the apartment, Hunter was more irritated than he should have been. He didn't mind driving something that absolutely couldn't wait: he was around, and Angel Grove wasn't that far. But really, his bro's timing could have been better.

He had to cancel dinner entirely, and he didn't see Cam for two days after that. He finally resorted to sneaking into the grad student offices and raiding Cam's desk for a schedule. The guy was freakishly organized, which meant that locating him was... well, maybe not freakishly easy, but nowhere near impossible either.

The computer lab was in the next building over. It was quiet when Hunter looked in, and it didn't take him long to pick out Cam, behind a desk on the right side of the room. Cam glanced up absently when the door opened, and Hunter raised his eyebrows. Cam did a double-take, then waved for him to come in.

"Hey," Hunter greeted him, sidling up to the desk. "Whatcha doing?"

"Technically?" Cam leaned back in his swivel chair and swung it a little from side to side. "I'm silently mocking a paper on temporal dynamics. But my time sheet says 'office hours.'"

"Working in the computer lab?" Hunter guessed.

Cam shrugged. "More of my students come to the lab than to my office. And there's more room here."

"Yeah, speaking of your office..." Hunter gave him an apologetic look. "I kinda went through your desk. Y'know, trying to figure out where you were. Sorry about that."

Cam looked more amused than annoyed. "You figured out where I was by going through my desk?"

It was Hunter's turn to shrug. "You had a schedule in one of your drawers. I had to ask someone which building it was, though."

"Any particular reason you went to all that trouble?" Cam wanted to know.

"Nah." Hunter hitched one hip up on the edge of the desk, peering around at Cam's computer screen. It was text, all right. He wasn't sneaking in paid rounds of solitaire after all. "I just figured, maybe I'd have better luck catching up with you in your native habitat."

Cam grimaced at that. "Sorry I didn't call you back last night. I got in late."

"Yeah?" Hunter picked up one of the pencils on the desk and twirled it idly between his fingers. "Doing what?"

"Research," Cam said succinctly. At first Hunter thought he was avoiding the question, but then he realized what Cam meant. Zord work, probably at the source.

"On site research?" he asked, just to make sure.

Cam nodded once.

"Ah." Hunter set the pencil down and glanced around the lab. "You here for a while?"

"Till five. You can come sit down if you want," Cam offered, tilting his head toward the chair beside him. There were two chairs and two computer stations behind the desk, which was oriented so that occupants could monitor the rest of the room without anyone being able to sneak up on them.

"Cool," Hunter said with a grin. He swung around behind the desk and took the second swivel chair. "The seat of power."

"The seat of annoying questions," Cam corrected, keeping his voice low. "You wouldn't believe some of the things people ask here."

"Well, I want my share," Hunter informed him. He bumped the mouse and considered the computer screen in front of him. "Teach me something."

Cam shot him an unreadable look. "Traditionally, people who come to the lab bring their own work."

"That's how much help I need," Hunter said, studying the desktop. "Don't even know enough to bring my own work. How do I check my e-mail on this?"

Cam gave his chair a backwards push, and it rolled just enough that he could look over Hunter's shoulder. "Open a browser," he said.

A box immediately popped up in the foreground, asking for his username.

Cam reached around him to tweak the keyboard away. At an angle, he typed "cwatanabe" into the first field. He typed what must have been a password into the second field, since all that appeared was ******, and then the box vanished. The browser window finished loading, and Cam pushed the keyboard back into its former resting place. "You're all set."

"You can be logged in twice?" Hunter went looking for his e-mail while he waited for the answer.

"Have to," Cam replied, still watching over his shoulder. "Students leave their dorm computers logged in all the time, and if they could only log in once, they wouldn't be able to use the lab or library computers at the same time."

Hunter didn't have any e-mail, so he opened a blank form and typed in Cam's address. _Your job is boring,_ he typed, then used the mouse to click "send."

Cam smirked when the e-mail alert flickered on his screen. "There's nothing boring about unsupervised internet access," he said aloud. But quietly, because someone was approaching the desk.

Cam got up to help the student in question, and Hunter started another e-mail. _Why didn't you call me this morning if you got in late last night?_ he wanted to know. He stared at the screen for a moment, then added, _And why didn't you look annoyed when I backed you up against a wall the other night?_

He frowned a little, glancing across the room in the direction Cam had gone. He'd just been fooling around. And yeah, maybe that's what Cam would say about the way he did the devil song. But Cam didn't fool around, as a general rule. More lately, maybe...

More a lot of things, lately. Hunter watched him fold his arms, staring the student's screen patiently. His attention didn't waver, and neither did Hunter's. _While I'm at it, _he wondered, _why do you have to look so hot all the time?_

The student looked up and said thank you, and Cam nodded once. Hunter leaned forward abruptly and pressed the "delete" key. He held it down until the screen was clear again, then he typed, _Want to go to Santa Monica with me?_ He sent the e-mail just as Cam was coming around the desk again.

Cam raised an eyebrow at his second new mail alert, but Hunter just smirked at him. So Cam deleted the first e-mail, opened the second, and gave Hunter exactly the same look again. "Why?"

"Bike and gear expo," Hunter offered. "Third week in March. Spring break, right? I think they do that on purpose. Factory Blue pays if I decide to go."

"For you," Cam countered. "How long is it?"

"I'll pay half your ticket," Hunter promised. "We'll split the cost. It lasts four days, but we don't have to stay the whole time if you've got a lot to do."

Cam was giving him the strangest look.

"What?" Hunter asked at last. "If you're not interested, all you have to do is say so."

The corner of Cam's mouth quirked, but the strange look lingered in his eyes. "I'm interested," he said evenly.

"Cool." Hunter smiled at him. "I'll get you the rest of the info tomorrow."

He went back to his e-mail, deciding to annoy his brother while he was at it. Cam didn't go back to his journal or whatever for a few minutes, but when Hunter glanced over at him he was just staring thoughtfully at the desk. Cam might be more... something, these days, but he was still just a little different from everyone else.

Okay, Hunter admitted with a smirk. A lot different than everyone else.

They went and got dinner after Cam's "office hours" were over, but they didn't get around to the whole practicing idea for a while. Cam got busy, and Hunter got distracted, mostly by the pre-season phone calls that started flying. He got more than his fair share, since he was the only rider expected to move into the 26+ age group during the coming season.

It wouldn't be that different, he figured. He'd be the youngest instead of the oldest for a while, but it was the same sport, same team, same tracks. He wouldn't have much time to rack up wins before the switch, but Factory Blue was behind him and he'd changed groups before. He spent more time than he'd expected promising that he didn't plan to jump ship if he struggled at first.

By the time spring break arrived, he was glad to get away for a while. He went down to see Blake on the weekend, only then realizing that he should have invited his bro to the expo too. He did, of course, but Blake was working so he didn't take him up on it. Hunter figured if he'd really wanted to go, he could have checked up on it himself and gotten the time off, which he hadn't.

So Hunter returned to Blue Bay Harbor alone, picked Cam up on Wednesday morning, and together they headed south. They stuck to the coast, and it wasn't such a bad drive. Long, but not boring. At least, not with company. It was more fun to argue with Cam than it was to have peace by himself.

Thursday was the first day of the show. They managed to check out all the interesting vendors by early afternoon, at which point Hunter finally admitted that they needed a schedule. Cam pointed out that they already had one--two, in fact--but he was the only one who could find it. He dragged it out of his backpack, and they conferred on Miss-able Events versus Events That Actually Sounded Cool.

It turned out there were no Events That Actually Sounded Cool on Thursday, so they left the expo and regrouped at the hotel. They wandered along the boardwalk after dinner. Cam didn't even pull out his laptop until Friday, at which point Hunter decided they needed to see more of the city.

After the moto demo in the morning, he steered Cam downtown for lunch and more idle wandering. They hadn't quite agreed on a place to eat when Hunter saw the rainbow triangle in a little window on the corner. "Hey," he said, nudging Cam and directing him with his eyes. "Gay bar."

Cam very pointedly looked at his watch. "It's one-thirty," he informed Hunter, like he had suggested getting wasted on a Friday afternoon.

"So?" Hunter didn't disillusion him, because Relieved Cam was always more fun when he followed Indignant Cam. "It's open. Let's get something to eat."

"Because bars are really known for their menu," Cam muttered. He allowed himself to be convinced, however, and that surprised Hunter just a little. He didn't bother to correct Cam on the menu thing either, because for all he knew the food here was like a high school cafeteria. It _might_ be good, though--they wouldn't know until they tried it, and that was the whole point.

Saying that there was a handful of people inside would have been overstating the matter. There were two people at a table in the back, one newspaper between them, and a guy at the bar with a basket of something fried in front of him. Hunter leaned over the bar next to him, looking around before he drummed on the surface of the bar with his hands. "Anybody here?" he asked the room at large.

"Yo." Another guy leaned out from the door at the end of the bar, and Hunter nodded in his direction. "What can I get ya?"

"You serve lunch?" Hunter wanted to know.

"Yeah, couple of menus coming right up," the guy told him. "Getcha something to drink?"

He glanced back at Cam, who shook his head. "Two waters," Hunter said, and the guy nodded as he ducked back through the door.

The food was good enough that Cam didn't complain, and they hung around for a while afterward just taking in the quiet. They weren't taking up space in the mostly deserted place, and it was sort of a haven from the noise of the street. Hunter traced a finger through the condensation on his empty glass, watching the drip break away to roll down and pool on the table.

"So, just out of curiosity," he began, when they'd both been silent for a while.

He saw Cam look up at him expectantly, and his lips quirked a little in rueful acknowledgement of how trivial this question was. "You said you'd slept with a guy," he continued, quietly enough that only Cam could hear him. "You mind me asking which one?"

Cam looked taken aback at that. Hunter shrugged apologetically at his expression. "Tell me if it's none of my business."

"It's... none of your business," Cam said slowly, like he was trying to figure something out. Why Hunter had asked, probably. He didn't know why; he was just curious. Like he'd said.

A moment later, Cam added, "Jules."

Hunter nodded once. "That's cool," he said, even though it wasn't. "I was just curious."

Nothing more was said on the subject until the next morning. Hunter had been thinking about it all night, which, no way was he gonna admit that, but now he really wanted to know. "Cam," he called, lying on his bed while Cam did something in the bathroom. "Just out of, y'know, curiosity... did you sleep with Sage?"

Cam was buttoning his shirt when he came around the corner, but he paused long enough to give Hunter an inquisitive look. "Why this sudden interest in my sex life?"

Hunter considered Cam's appearance from his position on the bed, then transferred his gaze to the ceiling again. "I dunno," he said noncommittally. He did know, but he wasn't going to tell Cam. "Did you?"

"Yes." That was all he said, and his tone was matter-of-fact.

Hunter thought about that, then rolled over on his side. "What about Kendrix?"

He saw Cam roll his eyes. "Fine, yes, I slept with Kendrix too. Why?"

"Because," Hunter grumbled. "That's three people, and do you know what that means?" He eyed Cam, wondering what had happened to his decision not to tell him. "You've officially had sex with more people than I have. I think that's disturbing."

"Oh, do you?" Cam looked, of all things, amused. "Why is that disturbing?"

"Because you're..." Hunter fumbled for words that wouldn't sound seriously obnoxious. "Serious," he said at last. "Serious about relationships, I mean. I'm the casual one, right? Do you know how many people I've had sex with?"

"Less than three?" Cam said after a moment.

"Two," Hunter told him. "Two people."

Cam just shrugged. "Casual doesn't mean..." He gestured vaguely, then stopped. "Wait, why are we talking about this again?"

Oops. "No reason," Hunter said, rolling off the bed and looking around for his wallet. "Ready to start the quest for breakfast?"

The quest, unfortunately, was unsuccessful. They finally agreed to eat something at the expo, which at least had decent coffee, and they spent the rest of the day there after checking in that morning. Or at least, the rest of the day up to and including dinner, after which they headed down to the boardwalk again.

That was when he met the skater. She recognized his face, which was flattering, and they got to talking shop while Cam pretended to listen. It was always cool to share the sport, and it took him a good ten or so minutes to realize it was anything more than that. She was subtle, he'd give her that. But when he looked at Cam to see if he was right, he caught an eye-roll that was definitely intended for the chick.

It took Hunter almost as much time to explain to her that he wasn't interested. The truth of being gay really didn't seem to deter her, which made him wonder if she'd known all along and just ignored it, or if it was news to her that she hadn't quite processed yet. Either way, it took him a really long time to get rid of her.

"That's it," he muttered, when they were finally headed in opposite directions. "I'm never speaking to a single woman again."

Cam had the nerve to laugh at him. "And all that time, I thought you were being so polite," he said with a smirk. "When in reality, you were just being exceptionally clueless. Congratulations," he added. "You fooled me."

"Yeah, and thanks for your help," Hunter retorted. "See if I ever rescue you from overzealous people in bars again."

"You should have given her a chance," Cam countered. "We could have been tied for number of sexual partners by tomorrow."

"No way was she a guy," Hunter said incredulously. "Unless you saw something I didn't, she was a chick all the way through."

Cam raised his eyebrows in a way that meant Hunter wasn't going to like whatever he said next. "Which brings up two interesting questions," he remarked. "One, would you sleep with someone who was trans, and two, was neither of your people a woman?"

"Neither of the people I slept with?" Hunter asked, giving him a suspicious look. "Did you miss the whole gay thing? Where have you been? Of course neither of them was a woman!"

Cam shrugged, and it was impossible to tell whether he was teasing or not. "I'm just saying, if you've never tried it--"

"Hey," Hunter snapped. "Don't even go there." It sounded harsh, even to him. He moderated his tone a little when he added, "Not everyone can say that and mean it, you know."

"Straight people mean it," Cam assured him, and now Hunter knew he'd been kidding. "It's just that it's only _true_ for bi people."

Mollified, Hunter started to feel embarrassed for jumping on Cam like that. But then Cam murmured, "Or so you keep telling me..." And Hunter stopped where he was to stare at him.

Cam stopped too, expectantly, and the teasing light was obvious in his eyes. But the whole thing with the skater had thrown him, and maybe there were some things that needed to be clarified. "Name someone you wouldn't sleep with," he told Cam.

Cam blinked. "Excuse me?"

Hunter just waited.

Finally, Cam said, "Blake."

It was Hunter's turn to draw back. "Really?" Then he frowned, shook his head, and muttered, "Wow, I so did not need that mental image."

Cam looked particularly innocent right then.

"Smartass," Hunter told him. "Seriously, though. Name someone you wouldn't sleep with because of what they are, not who they are."

This time, Cam's hesitation was more drawn out. With obvious reluctance, he suggested, "My father?"

"...Okay," Hunter agreed. He resolved not to make any more cracks about mental images. "Yeah. That works. Girls are your dad."

Cam gave him a really weird look for that, and when Hunter thought about it, he could see why.

"No, I mean, to me," he said. "Girls are weird to me the way your dad is weird to you. Well," he added as an aside, "not that the thought of Sensei Watanabe having sex with anyone isn't a little--"

"Creepy," Cam finished for him.

"Yeah," Hunter confirmed. "But sleeping with a girl? Also kind of..."

"Creepy," Cam repeated. "I know. I didn't mean to come across as..."

He trailed off too, and Hunter grimaced. "You didn't." And that was as much apology as Cam was gonna get. "I blame it on that chick. She was totally unexpected."

Cam just couldn't resist another dig. "To you."

"Yeah, yeah, to _me_," Hunter emphasized. "Next time maybe you can share your wisdom with the class."

Cam didn't make any promises, but as they moved off down the boardwalk again he asked, "So who was the other one? I assume one of them was Charlie."

"The guys I slept with?" Like he really needed to clarify a question like that. "Yeah, one was Charlie. New Years, actually, same time you hooked up with Jules."

"That was when you started sleeping together?"

"Yeah," Hunter said, avoiding Cam's gaze. He didn't really feel like going into the details. "Basically. The other was a guy from another team. Mechanic I meant in Sacramento. Corey." He didn't even remember Corey's last name. He wasn't sure he'd ever known it.

"You never mentioned him," Cam remarked.

Hunter shrugged a little. "It was a quick thing," he muttered.

Cam didn't comment, and they walked on in silence.

They blew off the Sunday schedule, doing a last tour of the vendors instead before heading home. If Hunter had realized it was the last time he'd take a moto expo so completely for granted, they might have waited a little longer before hitting the road. But it was just another show, and Cam had work to do before Monday, so they were gone by lunchtime.

If he'd been paying attention, it might possibly have occurred to him that his life was... changing. Whether he acknowledged it or not. Things were speeding up all around him, or at least, proceeding without his conscious control. Cam conned him into guitar practice the weekend after the expo, and that left him feeling seriously weird afterward.

Almost as weird as when Blake called to say that he was thinking about moving out. He and Tori had decided on August eighteenth as their wedding date, and they were talking about getting an apartment together this summer. Y'know, Blake had said, so we can be _settled._

Settled. He was starting to suspect that his own life was getting a little less settled every week, and he'd been glad for the predictable unsettledness of the road when spring trials began. Finally he could stop dealing with some of the weirdness for a day or two at a time. He missed Cam, which was annoying and kind of depressing at the same time, and he didn't know what to think about that. He missed Blake, too, in a pre-emptive way... he was gonna have the apartment to himself permanently soon, and how disturbing was that?

Spring trials were a welcome relief. They were different this year, but only in the way that they were different every year. Very little about the process was unexpected, and he took comfort in the routine and the adrenaline. He drowned himself in it--right up until the point when a loose track and a rock that shouldn't have been there pitched him into another rider and landed them both in the emergency room.

Several very expensive x-rays later, he had wrapped ribs and a cast on his arm. Not to mention a ton of paperwork that he really didn't want to fill out left-handed. The nurse wouldn't get off his back about next-of-kin or emergency contact numbers, which was annoying because Blake's new dorm number was in his cell--back at the track. It kept changing, and he hadn't bothered to memorize it.

Finally he gave her Cam's number, which he at least knew. On the condition that she let him have the phone first. Then one of his teammates snuck in to help him with forms while she was writing it down, so he missed the moment when she actually dialed. Only when he heard her say, "I'm calling from the UCLA Medical Center," did he realize what she was doing.

"Hey, hey," Hunter said, raising his voice. "I said I'd call him. Let me have the phone."

The nurse gave her name without paying any attention to him, and for a moment he thought she was talking to Cam's voice mail. Then she paused. "Yes, Mr. Hunter Bradley."

Cam had known it was him? "Let me talk to him," he insisted, waving in her direction. "Come on, I can speak for myself."

"He's listed you as his next-of-kin," the nurse was saying, which was totally untrue. "Is that correct? I can only disclose medical information to family members."

There was a longer pause this time. Hunter gave up trying to get her attention, figuring she'd have questions when Cam didn't know what the hell she was talking about anyway. In the meantime, he just rolled his eyes at his teammate. Next-of-kin. Right. You'd think the family name would have tipped them off.

"He was brought in with a broken arm, bruised ribs, and multiple lacerations," she told the phone, and Hunter blinked. What happened to the family members part? "He's in stable condition. He'll be discharged later this afternoon."

He waved at her impatiently. "Hello, can I talk now?" Hunter demanded.

The nurse gave him a sideways look, but she waited a moment to hand over the phone. "He'd like to talk to you," she said, unnecessarily.

Yeah, no kidding.

"Cam?" He wasn't looking forward to this lecture.

"Hunter." Cam didn't sound annoyed. If anything, he sounded a little worried. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Look, I'm sorry about the phone call. I left my cell at the track, and--"

"It's fine," Cam interrupted. "Don't worry about it. What happened?"

"Bad day at the track," he said, hoping to brush it off. "You wouldn't believe the forms I gotta fill out." All that and he was sidelined on top of it. He wanted a do-over.

"Are you going to stay with Factory Blue?" Cam asked bluntly.

He tried not to look at his teammate. "I don't know," he said, cradling his arm against his chest and staring down at the floor. In that moment, the uncertainty made him feel awfully alone. "They'll have to cut me loose until my arm heals, anyway."

There was a quiet moment, and when Cam spoke again his voice was quieter. "Which arm is it? Do you need a ride home?"

"Right arm," Hunter muttered. No way would he be able to drive his truck. He hadn't even thought of that. "I can get a lift; don't worry about it."

"Don't go anywhere," Cam said sternly. "How much time do you need? I can be in LA tonight."

He bit back another protest, because he really didn't want to ask someone else. "I won't be ready to go till tomorrow, at least."

"I'll be there tomorrow morning," Cam promised. "Where are you staying?"

The nurse was giving him pointed looks, which he had been successfully ignoring until two more guys appeared in the doorway and she started harassing them instead. Apparently he couldn't have more than two visitors at a time--even if one of them was Miller, the guy he'd hit on his way to broken bones. Damn.

In his rush to get off the phone and intercept the nurse, he forgot to ask Cam how he was planning to get to LA. And he had classes tomorrow, too. Geez. He shouldn't have let them call Cam in the first place. He really should call him back and tell him not to come.

But he didn't want to.

He wanted to less and less as the day wore on. By the time he laid himself carefully on top of his bed that night, Cam was the only thing he had to look forward to. He stared up at the ceiling, a grey shadow in the semi-darkness, and thought about the stupid way your life could change in an hour, a minute. A second.

It wasn't like Factory Blue had a choice. An injured rider wouldn't win any races, and they couldn't afford to be short at the beginning of the season. He was gonna be out for a month and a half. He was already cut out of the loop, already missing stuff, already falling behind while his teammates took it all for granted. And there was nothing he could do about it.

There wasn't any comfortable way to sleep, so he just lay awkwardly on his back and hurt for most of the night. He must have dozed off at some point, because the time between eleven o'clock and one in the morning seemed to go by faster than the other hours. He didn't remember anything about three am at all. By the time his phone alarm went off at seven, he was sound asleep.

He heard the phone, ignored it, and waited for it to shut off by itself before he went back to sleep. It wasn't like he had anything to get up for.

The knocking on his door woke him up around ten. He tried to sit up automatically and groaned at the pain that stabbed through his chest. Wincing, he rolled carefully over onto his left side and considered the floor for a moment before trying to shift his weight. His legs were only moderately stiff, but the persistent ache in his arm started to throb the moment he became upright.

Wonderful. He grimaced as he stumbled toward the door. He couldn't even think who would be trying to find him right now. He was like the team's fastest falling non-entity--

Cam stood outside the door. Hunter couldn't even process his presence at first. Then he remembered Cam saying he'd be there "in the morning," but honestly, he'd figured Cam might _leave_ Blue Bay by lunchtime... if he was _lucky._ "You--what are you--"

Cam waited patiently, until it became obvious that he wasn't going to get out a complete sentence. "Hi," he remarked, studying Hunter overtly. "You've looked better."

"Hey." He wasn't even sure whether he meant it as a greeting or a protest. "How did you... y'know." He tried to find the words when it became clear that Cam didn't, in fact, know. "How did you get here?"

Cam raised his eyebrows. "Last week, I'm sure I mentioned buying a car?"

Oh. Okay, maybe... It was coming back to him. His neighbor was moving, or switching schools, or something equally un-Cam-related, and so he hadn't paid much attention until the part about him getting rid of his car. By selling it to Cam. Hunter had voiced serious concerns about secondhand cars that he hadn't gotten to check out for himself, but Cam had informed him that there were other mechanics in the state of California and that was the end of it.

"Yeah," Hunter muttered at last. "Car, I remember now." It was just so strange to think of Cam with a car that it hadn't... stuck, or something. Or maybe he'd been distracted. He couldn't remember. Or bring himself to care right now. Because if Cam had driven, that meant they weren't taking Hunter's truck back.

"So you drove down here," he added, trying not to sound ungrateful. Because it was kind of a haul, especially with morning rush hour in the middle of it.

"Actually, Jules and I drove down here," Cam said casually. "He brought your truck up last night. I hope that's all right. I tried to call you at the hospital, but they said you'd been discharged already. And your cell phone was off, so I didn't leave a message."

Hunter stared at him, trying to figure that out. His cell had died yesterday, yeah, so maybe it wouldn't have registered a missed call when he plugged it in. And he'd been out of the hospital a couple of hours after talking to Cam. But... Jules? With his truck? For just a second, he felt like maybe he was one of those coma patients waking up to find out that way more time had passed than he thought.

"Did you need it for something?" Cam asked, watching his expression change.

"I--" Hunter shook his head abruptly. "No. Jules?" he repeated, frowning.

Cam shrugged. "He was in the area. He drove your truck up to Blue Bay Harbor, and I brought him back this morning."

"How did he know?" Hunter blurted out. Geez, it wasn't like he'd made the papers or something. It wasn't even a race, just a practice run.

Cam was giving him an odd look. "I told him. When I called him and asked if he could bring your truck up."

Cam still talked to Jules? His stomach felt weird, and he really didn't like this whole standing up thing right now. He turned around and headed for the bed. He heard Cam following him, and he sounded worried when he asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Not so great," Hunter mumbled. He put out his left hand to brace himself as he sat down. "I didn't... I guess I didn't think you'd be here so early." He was still wearing the sweats someone had brought him in the ER--he hadn't had the energy to struggle out of them last night, and he wasn't totally sure he did now either.

"I can wait." Cam definitely sounded worried now, which was a strange tone for him. "If you have more you need to do, it's not a big deal." Except that it must be, since it was a weekday and who knew what he'd cancelled to be here in the first place.

"No--I'm done," he said, then stopped. The disturbing part was that it was true, but he figured it was better not to think about that now. He needed to wake up, and he needed to change. A shower would be good, but seemed like way too much work. Then he needed breakfast.

"I picked up some sandwiches on the way." Cam might have just read his mind. Which was either cool or freaky, but right now Hunter was leaning toward cool. "If you want something to eat."

"Yeah," he said gratefully. "I do." He lifted his head, glancing around. "The guys helped me pack up yesterday, so..."

"Tell me what to take," Cam suggested. "I'll carry some stuff out to the car while I get the sandwiches."

Cam was very efficient. They were on the road in time to make it all the way to Blue Bay Harbor before the evening rush hour. Cam got everything in the back of his car while Hunter got his sandwich and a change of clothes, and on the way home Hunter assessed everything he could easily assess about Cam's new old car.

They stopped to get food to bring back to the apartment. Cam unloaded the car while Hunter found plates and things to eat with and generally tried not to be useless. Cam added some CDs to the pile of his stuff, telling him to entertain himself when he unpacked, and they ate.

It should have been comforting, and it kind of was but Hunter was too distracted to really appreciate it. Just distracted, not depressed, because really, of all the things that happened in the world, how bad was this? Not very. But distracted, yeah, because of all the different ways that run yesterday could have gone... well, most of them didn't end up with him in the hospital.

He didn't want to talk about it. Cam seemed to sense his mood, or maybe he just had stuff to do, because he left after dinner with nothing but a warning to Hunter to call him if he needed anything. It was kind of a relief to be alone. Finally.

The feeling lasted until the next morning, when he woke up on the couch with the TV still on and a bad taste in his mouth. He was wearing the same clothes he'd worn the day before. He still hadn't showered. And he was way more of a mess than he'd realized.

Okay, he thought with a sigh. This was bad. He was off the racing circuit until at least the middle of June. That was a lot of time to make up.

Maybe too much time.

He got up. He started some coffee. He wrapped his cast, unwrapped his ribs, and took a shower. He put on clean clothes, and he considered his food situation. It looked like canned soup for breakfast. Or maybe frozen pizza. He hadn't expected to be back for a while.

He was off the racing circuit.

He turned the oven on to preheat and called Cam.

He got Cam's voice mail, which was disappointing but not surprising, so he left a message and got out the pizza. No need to keep it frozen if he was just going to cook it in a few minutes. While he was waiting for the oven to warm up, he started shuffling through the CDs Cam had left. He also called Blake.

"Yeah," his bro's voice mumbled a moment later.

"It's Hunter," he said, frowning at one of the CDs.

"Yeah," the mumble repeated. "It's also eight o'clock in the morning."

So? He put the CD down and tried not to sigh. "Look, bro, I'm at home. I crashed my bike and I'm off the circuit for a while. I just figured I'd let you know."

"What?" Blake sounded like he was going from annoyed to worried pretty fast, which wasn't really the point but hey, whatever it took to wake him up. The longer Hunter went without telling him, the more pissed he'd be when he found out. "Are you okay, bro?"

"Yeah, I'm cool." Which he wasn't, but no need to be a wuss about it. "Broke my arm, got a couple of bruised ribs, no big deal. Won't be able to race for a while, though."

"No kidding." Blake didn't sound appeased. "When? What happened? How did you get home?"

"Track was dry; I hit a loose spot. Then a rock. Then another bike," he said with a grimace. "The other guy's fine. I'm out until next month."

"When, yesterday?" Blake wanted to know. "Anything I can do?"

"Tuesday," Hunter muttered. "Nah, the guys packed me up and Cam gave me a ride. I've gotta get some food," he added, glancing around the kitchen. "I guess grocery shopping's on the list for today."

"Cam gave you a ride?" Blake repeated. "You called Cam?"

"It was kind of an accident," Hunter began, but Blake interrupted him.

"No, whatever bro, it's cool. It's good he's got your back. But listen, finals are coming up and I'm stuck here for another two weeks. I can come home tomorrow afternoon, if you want..."

He hesitated, and it was Hunter's turn to cut him off. "Stay where you are. I'm fine, okay? I don't need anyone baby-sitting me."

"Yeah, well, it sounds like Cam's got that covered anyway," Blake retorted. "You should just ask him to get your groceries for you."

"He's a little busy for that," Hunter said irritably.

"Good thing," Blake replied. "Since you don't want anyone taking care of you."

Hunter frowned down at the CDs on the counter. "What d'you mean by that?"

"Nothing," Blake informed him. "Look, Tori and I are gonna check out a couple of apartments this weekend, but we'll be around most of the time. We usually study in her room, so if you need anything, try her number too, okay?"

"Yeah." It was ironic, he decided, that he actually did know Tori's number off the top of his head. "Sure. Good luck with that stuff."

"Thanks." Blake sounded more sympathetic now than he had at any point during the conversation. Not that he was looking for sympathy or anything. "Feel better, bro."

"Will do," he muttered.

The oven beeped a few minutes after he'd hung up. He unwrapped the ham and pineapple pizza and stuck it on a tray, sliding it into the oven and starting the timer before he turned back to the CDs. The one on top was bugging him, because he felt like he should recognize it but he couldn't remember why.

The phone rang again. "Hi," Cam said, when he picked it up. "Can I come over?"

Hunter raised his eyebrows, trying not to smile. "Yeah," he agreed, not for any particular reason other than that Cam had asked. "Why?"

"I'm bored?" Cam suggested.

Hunter snorted. "Try again."

Cam didn't hesitate. "Because I feel like harassing you, and it's easier in person?"

That made Hunter chuckle. "In that case, be my guest."

The pizza was done by the time Cam arrived, and Hunter even went to the trouble of slicing it normally instead of just cutting off whatever part looked best and leaving it until he was hungry again. Forwarned by Cam's phone call, he was sitting at the table with a plate _and _a napkin by the time someone knocked on the door. Even a glass of water. Yeah, he was together. He was fine.

"It's open," he yelled in response to the knock. "Come on in."

Cam stuck his head around the doorframe, and Hunter didn't miss the flicker of an assessing glance as he took in everything in under a second. "Hi," Cam remarked, closing the door behind him as though he hadn't just weighed up everything he could see. "Feeling any better?"

"Arm hurts like hell," Hunter admitted, pausing in his pizza consumption to consider Cam in return. He was wearing a green-striped t-shirt and jeans, looking very much like he would have when they were Rangers... if the t-shirt had been the right size, and the jeans hadn't needed to be rolled up.

"Plus," he added, when he realized Cam was still looking at him, "the whole sitting down and standing up thing isn't as easy as it looks. But otherwise, yeah, I feel okay."

"Glad to hear it," Cam said, apparently choosing not to interpret that as sarcasm. He pulled out the other chair and sat down, glancing casually around the apartment as he did so. "Do you always have pizza for breakfast?"

"Why, do you want some?" Hunter asked innocently. "There's more on the counter."

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about this next-of-kin thing." Cam sounded more amused than pissed off, so that was probably a good sign. "You know UCLA's probably one of the only places in the country where you could claim that and get away with it."

That made Hunter frown, but Cam was giving him an expectant look. Before he could reply to that Cam wanted to know, "So did you fire Blake, or what?"

Hunter let out an exaggerated sigh. "That nurse was confused. She asked for an emergency contact number, not next-of-kin. And Blake switched rooms this semester, so I didn't know his number and my phone was back at the track. I told her not to call you without letting me talk to you first," he added.

"I see." Cam said it in that tone of voice that meant, your ridiculous explanation would have confused a lesser mind. "Did it occur to you that I'm not a particularly _useful_ emergency contact? I don't even know what your blood type is, let alone whether you're allergic to anything."

"O negative and sulfa drugs," Hunter told him. "There, now you're informed."

"You're allergic to sulfa?" Cam gave him an odd look. After a moment he remarked, "That's kind of important. Is there really no one else other than Blake who would know that?"

Hunter shrugged. "Factory Blue has most of my medical information, but no one who came to the hospital with me had it. They didn't need it, anyway; it's not like I was unconscious."

"You could have been," Cam said, and now he was frowning a little. "You know... maybe it's not such a bad idea. I mean--my dad's the only one who can speak for me, and he's not the most available person on the planet."

Hunter looked at him quizzically.

"Maybe we should swap medical information," Cam clarified. "Just for safety purposes. It couldn't hurt."

Hunter considered that. "Yeah," he said at last. He couldn't think of any embarrassing medical secrets that he didn't want Cam to know about. "Sure, that's cool."

"Just write down anything they asked you for in the ER," Cam told him. "That way, if you ever end up unconscious, you'll have doubled your chances of the hospital being able to reach someone who knows something about you."

"Fine," Hunter agreed, standing up with his empty plate in hand. "Sure you don't want some pizza?"

Cam's eyes narrowed. "Is that all you have to eat?"

Hunter stopped, staring down at him. "You're really annoying," he said at last.

That made Cam's expression relax, his lips twitching. "I'm just returning the favor."

Hunter blinked. "You..."

"I'm offering you a ride to the store," Cam interrupted. "I promise not to make fun of your food choices. It'll be easier than trying to carry your groceries on the bus, anyway."

Yeah, no question about that. He wasn't sure he believed Cam's promise, though. And hadn't he told Blake that he didn't need babysitting?

"Yeah," he heard himself saying. "Okay."

And that was pretty much how it went for the entire weekend, and the week that followed. He felt helpless, Cam made him do things anyway, and he complained a lot. He hated himself for whining. He hated Cam for being around to hear him whine. He gave the guy a lot of attitude for it, and Cam totally ignored him. He continued to show up at more or less constant intervals, pretty much every day, to make sure Hunter had gotten out of bed and eaten something and didn't need to be driven anywhere.

Hunter didn't know how he found the time for it. He also didn't know why Cam let himself be convinced that he _needed_ to be driven to a club the second weekend he was stuck at the apartment with nothing to do. And the next morning he had no idea how Cam had wound up in bed with him, all their clothes still on, with his cast propped on a pillow and Cam's arms wrapped tight around him.

He didn't move for several minutes. Partly because he felt like shit. Well, okay, mostly because he felt like shit. But a little because he was trying desperately to remember what had happened. How they had ended up like that. Because Cam was _hugging_ him, seriously, voluntarily, sleeping with his arms around him, and Hunter hated himself for forgetting the events that had led to this moment.

It was the first time he had regretted anything other than his arm and his ribs since that day at the track. So he laid there, wincing... wondering. What made Cam stick around when he pulled this needy adolescent crap? What had he done to deserve Cam at his door every freakin' day, when Cam had his own problems and way more of a life than Hunter did right now?

He heard Cam groan softly, easing away a second later. Hunter didn't move, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to keep the pain at bay. The problem with getting drunk when you were injured was that, not only were painkillers off-limits for the duration of the binge, but when you woke up you hurt _everywhere_. Just the shifting of the mattress made him tense into a protective ball of already pain-knotted muscles.

"Are you awake?" Cam whispered. His voice came from somewhere nearby, but rolling over to see where was not an option.

He mumbled something that was supposed to be "yeah," but came out more like an indeterminate grunt. He was okay with monosyllabic communication. He'd kind of like it to be in actual words, though.

"I'll be right back," Cam said quietly.

Hunter thought he was gone for a while. He was drifting in the agonizing haze of semi-consciousness, where everything seemed both uncomfortable and unbelievably slow, when he heard more movement inside the room. "Hunter?" Cam's voice murmured.

"Yeah," he muttered, and this time it sounded a little more like he'd meant it to. He shifted as best he could, flinching more at the ache in his head than the one in his arm. "Stupid," he mumbled to himself.

"Here," Cam said, his voice still low. "Prescription'll help your head too."

He was holding out a pill, Hunter realized groggily. And water.

He took them, then leaned back against the wall behind his bed until they started working. Cam left again, apparently taking his closed eyes as a hint. Which they weren't, but he didn't even realize Cam was still out there until he heard stuff being shuffled around in the kitchen. If he made breakfast, Hunter thought with a sigh, then he would officially invalidate the last of Hunter's pity party.

Cam made breakfast.

Hunter stumbled out of his room when the bathroom started to seem more comfortable than his bed, and the smell of food disturbed his stomach. By the time he came back, though, Cam was sitting at the table alone with toast and raspberry jam. Hunter lowered himself carefully into the chair opposite him and watched him for a long moment.

Cam finished his first slice of toast, then put jam on the second and slid the plate across the table without a word. He got up and poured more juice for himself, more water for Hunter, and brought both glasses back to the table in silence. Hunter dared a bite of toast. Bread and water, right? How bad could it be?

It wasn't bad at all, as it turned out. He managed to eat, and drink, and even feel weirdly grateful for a Sunday morning that didn't suck as much as he'd expected it to. Cam didn't say anything about the drinking, and Hunter didn't ask about the sleeping.

He dug out a piece of paper after breakfast and started writing down his medical information while Cam washed the dishes. It wasn't easy, trying to do it left-handed. When Cam realized what he was doing, he came over to hover by Hunter's chair.

Cam watched over his shoulder for a long moment before commenting, "I don't mind writing for you."

"Why?" Hunter muttered without looking up. "Can't read my handwriting?"

He felt Cam's hands settle on his shoulders, and he inhaled sharply when warm fingers started rubbing soothing circles into the tense muscles of his lower neck. He tipped his head forward automatically, suppressing a moan as the hands started moving outward. He let go of the pen before it could slide out of suddenly slack fingers.

God... could he keep this one, please?

He actually smiled to himself at the thought, just a little smile because Cam would kill him if he knew what he was thinking. But geez, what the fuck--he was seriously the best thing that could happen to anyone, and here he was, killing time with an injured bike jockey like he had nothing better to do in the world.

"You said," Cam was telling him quietly, "that we share problems." His hands were gentle on muscles already strained by hurt and the still unfamiliar weight of plaster. "You've taken an awful lot of mine lately," he continued, "so I think you owe me."

"Mm-hmm," Hunter agreed, staring down at the table through half-lidded eyes. He wondered what that meant. It had seemed like the sort of thing that required an affirmative response.

Cam kept up his shoulder rub for several minutes, and those were almost the best minutes of the day. Finally, though, he came around the table again and sat down, picking up the pen Hunter had been using and stealing his paper. Then he started asking questions.

Hunter didn't mind. It did occur to him to protest when it didn't look like Cam was making his own list, but he wrote up an equivalent as soon as he'd finished and looked around for a place to put it. At least, that was what Hunter figured he was doing.

"Put it in the silverware drawer," he suggested, propping his head up on his good arm as he watched Cam's bemused expression. "Seriously. That's where the important stuff is, under the tray in the silverware drawer."

Cam gave him a look like, you've got to be kidding me, but he did go investigate. And he found the copies of their birth certificates, along with social security cards, vaccination records, and various other things they might have to produce quickly. "The silverware drawer?" Cam repeated, raising his eyebrows.

Hunter offered a one-shouldered shrug. "We always know where they are."

Cam shook his head, but he added the list he'd just completed to the documents under the tray and closed the drawer. Hunter watched him put his own list on the counter by the door. It was such an easy thing, really, now that he'd done it... but Cam seemed to appreciate it, and it was kind of good to think that even when Blake moved and took his stuff with him, Hunter's wouldn't be the only things left behind.

It wasn't the only thing Cam did for him. After that weekend, he started listening more carefully when Cam threw out his casual "suggestions." Because really, the guy knew what he was talking about, and Cam didn't say much just for the fun of it.

Which was how Hunter found himself volunteering at the kids' co-op the following week, and performing with Cam at another coffeehouse the weekend afterward. They started practicing together more seriously--partly because Hunter didn't have anything else to do, and partly because it was fun. He wasn't sure when it had stopped being weird and started being hot, but he liked watching Cam be sexy and he didn't try to pretend otherwise.

He still got angry. At Factory Blue, at the world, at the way things worked out. But it wasn't all-consuming. It couldn't be, 'cause Cam kicked his butt whenever he got depressed. Not that he tried to, Hunter thought... it just happened. Because Cam always listened, and when he listened it was like the things he was hearing weren't so bad.

Maybe because he knew what it was like to have circumstances screw you over.

Summer snuck up on them and settled in all around. Cam stopped teaching and took a temporary consulting job. Blake moved out of the apartment and into a new building with Tori. Plans for the wedding started cropping up in every conversation he had with his bro, and the middle of August was only two months away when he and Cam reserved their motel room in Angel Grove.

The cast finally came off. His ribs were pronounced fit to ride at the same time, but he ended up going through rehab to get back some of his lost arm strength. By the time he was allowed out on the track, the season was way beyond him. Factory Blue took him back anyway and put him on the exhibition circuit.

He didn't mind it as much as he'd expected. He got to stay with the team, he got to check out the other riders, and hey, he was racing again. Nothing could beat a good day on a fast bike. Cam told him not to think of it as missing the season so much as it was getting a head start on the next one.

That was the other good thing about the exhibition circuit. The schedule was less rigorous and a little more flexible. He spent more of the summer in Blue Bay Harbor than he had since joining Factory Blue, and it was kind of cool. More time at home meant more time with Cam.

He was kind of surprised by how much that meant to him.


End file.
